A new highly effective anticysticercosis vaccine expressed in transgenic papaya

Recent advances in the development of transgenic papaya technology

“…The most common selectable marker gene used in the production of transgenic papaya is the neomycin phosphotransferase (nptII) gene that confers kanamycin resistance. This marker has been used by several research groups in the development of PRSV-resistant papaya [15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24], resistance to mites [25] and Phytophthora [26], aluminum and herbicide tolerance [27][28], delayed ripening trait [29] and production of vaccine against cysticercosis [30] and tuberculosis [31] (Table 1).…”

“…Zhu et al [35] also developed a transformation protocol using the green fluorescent protein (GFP) gene insert as a selectable marker. [27][28] Long shelf life or delayed ripening trait [29,[48][49][50][51] Vaccine against cystercercosis [30] Delivery systems Agrobacterium-mediated transformation Agrobacterium tumefaciens is a Gram-negative phytopathogen that causes crown gall disease, manifested as tumors of stem tissues in more than one hundred plant species mostly belonging to the dicot family [36]. The earliest experiments done in papaya involved the Agrobacterium infection of leaf discs and recovery of transgenic callus [37] but there was no regeneration of whole plants.…”

“…Gonsalves et al [43] used the gene gun in transferring an untranslatable cp gene derived from PRSV HA 5-1 and some of the resulting transgenic lines were resistant to PRSV. These pioneering studies in the early and late 1990s paved the way for other research groups to use particle bombardment in developing transgenic papaya with novel traits such as virus resistance [39,[44][45][46][47], delayed ripening [29,[48][49][50][51] and other useful traits [25,26,30] (Table 1).…”

“…Vaccine against cysticercosis The use of transgenic papaya as a new antigen delivery system for the production of a vaccine against cysticercosis has recently been reported by Hernandez et al [30]. Cysticercosis is an infectious disease that affects humans through pigs which serve as host for the parasite Taenia solium.…”

“…Embryogenic papaya cells were co-transformed with the pUI 235-5.1 vector containing either of three inserts for the above-mentioned peptides and the pWRG1515 plasmid containing GUS-A, hph gene (providing hygromycin resistance) or nptII gene (providing kanamycin resistance) using particle bombardment [30]. KETc1 and KETc12 were modified to contain additional six histidine residues to increase their size and aid in their identification.…”