To bump up yield, Yang and his colleagues turned to rice. They targeted the part of rice we eat, the endosperm inside the seed, a natural nutrient storage organ. This is an excellent site for the accumulation and long-term stable storage of recombinant proteins. By driving expression of the HSA gene in the endosperm, the team managed to obtain 2.74 grams of pure HSA protein per kilogram of rice seed, more than 25 times the 0.1 grams of HSA collected from 1kg of tobacco leaves. In addition to obtaining a high yield, the rice-derived HSA shared the same molecular weight, crystal structure, molecular binding sites, and other biochemical characteristics as that of blood-derived HSA. These similarities translated to functional equivalence in tests for ligand binding, promotion of cell growth in culture, and the treatment of fluid retention in a rat model with liver cirrhosis. The rice-derived HSA also displayed an equivalent immunogenicity to that of plasma HSA. That is, animals injected with either rice HSA or plasma HSA developed similar immune reactions. However, before rice HSA can be used in humans it will need to go through extensive clinical trials. Furthermore, to generate sufficient quantities of HSA to meet global demand - an estimated 500 tonnes a year - production will need to be scaled up to open-field farming. So, high-value human proteins will in future grow on muddy rice paddies. Reinhard Renneberg has been professor of bioanalytical chemistry at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology since 1994