Tsuda S, Yoshioka K, Tanaka T, Iwata A, Yoshikawa A, Watanabe Y, Okada Y
Plant Biotechnology Institute, Ibaraki Agricultural Center, Iwama, Japan.
Vox Sang. 1998;74(3):148-55.
The aim was to produce HBcAg from plants more cheaply than can be done by other currently available means, and to apply such antigen to immunoassay procedures for pretransfusion testing of donor blood.
Transgenic Nicotiana tabacum cv. SR-1 plants expressing the human hepatitis B virus (HBV) core antigen (HBcAg) gene were generated by Agrobacterium-mediated transformation. The recombinant product, called tHBcAg, can assemble itself into a spherical particle with a diameter of 25 to 30 nm, and can maintain two antigenic determinants of HBcAg, namely HBc/alpha and HBc/beta. Partly purified tHBcAg was used in the hemagglutination-inhibition (HI) test, as routinely used by the Japanese Blood Center, to test a panel of 524 blood units taken from HBV-positive donors.
In the HI test, tHBcAg showed serologic properties comparable to that from Escherichia coli, the standard antigen used in the Japanese Blood Center.
Transgenic plants can produce reagents for serologic testing and perhaps even such medical materials as oral vaccines.
目标是以比目前其他可用方法更廉价的方式从植物中生产乙肝核心抗原（HBcAg），并将这种抗原应用于献血者输血前检测的免疫测定程序。
通过农杆菌介导的转化产生了表达人乙肝病毒（HBV）核心抗原（HBcAg）基因的转基因烟草品种SR-1植株。这种重组产物称为tHBcAg，它能自行组装成直径为25至30纳米的球形颗粒，并能保留HBcAg的两个抗原决定簇，即HBc/α和HBc/β。部分纯化的tHBcAg用于血凝抑制（HI）试验，这是日本血液中心常规使用的方法，用于检测从HBV阳性献血者采集的524份血液样本。
在HI试验中，tHBcAg表现出与日本血液中心使用的标准抗原大肠杆菌来源的HBcAg相当的血清学特性。
转基因植物可以生产用于血清学检测的试剂，甚至可能生产口服疫苗等医用材料。
