REVIEWS

Research advances in genetic engineering of plantibody.

ZENG Junzhi, FU Yu, YU Xiaocong, JIANG Xin
and HUANG Hual iang
Institute o f Genetics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Betjiny 100101, C h i w

Abstract The combination of engineering antibody and plant biotechnology creates the plantibody. It
has been reported that the engineering antibodies expressed in plant, no matter whether they are intact
or small-molecular antibodies, keep their antigen-binding specificity, which means they are functional.
This trait makes plantibody notable. Now the researches are focused mainly on the following three as-
pects: ( i ) Therapeutic antibody in clinic. It is expected to offer the opportunity of large-scale anti-
body procluction in agriculture systems, for the purpose of decreasing the cost greatly. Moreover, the
property of multiple sexual hybridization between plants can be used to proclrce bi- or multi-functional
antibodies and create new antibody medicines. ( ii ) Plant physiology. Engineering antibodies against
plant hormones or some active materials can block their activities in plant, so the trait of plantibody
could be used to study the growth and development of plant. ( iii Plant disease-resistance. The gene
of antibody against plant virus can be transferred into plant to defend the intrusion of virus in order to
cure the disease.
Keywords: antibody gene, transgenic plant, gene expression, plantibody.

IN the recent 20 years, with the development of the molecular biology, the genetic engineering technique

Chinese Science Bulletin Vo1.44 No. 5 March 1999

 REVIEWS
is created consequently. Many kinds of insect-resistant, disease-resistant and good-quality genes have been
isolated by the plant genetic engineering, a batch of new engineering crops are acquired and have been
commercially used. In the medical field, using engineering antibody technique, various antibody genes,
including the whole heavy- and light-chains or their variable regions, have been isolated from hybridorna
and are reformed to overcome their irnrnunogenetic barrier in clinical practice. Since the beginning of
1990s, with an increasing improvement in antibody engineering and plant biotechnology, plantibody has
been acquired by transferring the antibody genes into plant, and it is surprising that it has the . m e anti-
gen-binding activity as its original monoclonal antibody from hybridoma; that is, it is functional. Thls at-
tracts much attention of scientists''. 21. Since the establishment of the monoclonal antibody technique, an-
tibodies have been broadly used in clinical therapy and diagnosis. However, the imperfect producing sys-
tems with low production and high cost make it difficult to satisfy the necessity. If the antibody could be
expressed in plant and produced on large-scale in the field, it would largely reduce the production cost and
alleviate the contradiction between supply and demand. Furthermore, it would develop new research
branches in untraditional applied field of antibody such as the physiological function of plant regulatory fac-
tors, disease-resistance and environmental function of plantr2'3 1 .
1 Types and expressing systems of engineering antibody
( i ) Classification of engineering antibody. According to the completeness of their structure, anti-
bodies can be classified as intact or small-molecular. Intact antibody includes the full-size heavy- and light-
chains while small molecular antibody is only part of the intact (fig. 1). According to the structure and
function, they can be classified into three basic types: chimeric antibody, for example, human-mouse
chimeric antibody, reshaping antibody and small-molecular antibody which contains only some domains of
an intact antibody and can further be classified as: ( a ) Fab fragment, only consists of light-chain and

Fig. 1. Engineered antibodies used in plant expression vector. RB, Right border; R" , selectable resistance gene; P,
promoter; S, signal peptide; IG, imrnunoglobulin sequences; T, terminator; LB, left border; VH,variable domain of
heavy chain; VI., variable domain of light chain; L, linker peptide; &. constant domain of heavy chain; CL, constant
domain of light chainr4].

Chinese Science Bulletin Vol. 44 No. 5 March 1999