Research Progress of a Potential Bioreactor: Duckweed

Abstract

Recently, plant bioreactors have flourished into an exciting area of synthetic biology because of their product safety, inexpensive production cost, and easy scale-up. Duckweed is the smallest and fastest-growing aquatic plant, and has advantages including simple processing and the ability to grow high biomass in smaller areas. Therefore, duckweed could be used as a new potential bioreactor for biological products such as vaccines, antibodies, pharmaceutical proteins, and industrial enzymes. Duckweed has made a breakthrough in biosynthesis as a chassis plant and is being utilized for the production of plenty of biological products or bio-derivatives with multiple uses and high values. This review summarizes the latest progress on genetic background, genetic transformation system, and bioreactor development of duckweed, and provides insights for further exploration and application of duckweed.

Robust Agrobacterium-Mediated Transient Expression in Two Duckweed Species (Lemnaceae) Directed by Non-replicating, Replicating, and Cell-to-Cell Spreading Vectors

“…Efficient methods of stable genetic transformation have been developed for some duckweed species (reviewed in Yang et al, 2020 ). Genetically modified duckweed has been used for different applications, including high-yield expression of various recombinant proteins ( Gasdaska et al, 2003 ; Cox et al, 2006 ; Vunsh et al, 2007 ; Yang et al, 2021 ). These lines of evidence suggest that duckweed can tolerate high levels of recombinant protein accumulation.…”

“…Here, we demonstrated Agrobacterium -mediated high-yield transient expression of the GFP reporter protein in duckweed fronds. The recombinant protein accumulation using the PVX-GFP vector favorably compares to the highest yields reached in transgenic duckweed, as reviewed by Yang et al (2021) . Based on simple calculations, our data for GFP accumulation of 1.2 mg/g fresh biomass converts to ∼24 g/kg of dry biomass, considering ∼5% dry biomass in fresh biomass of S. polyrhiza measured in our experiments.…”

“…Both species have high protein contents (20–25% of dry biomass) and fast growth rates achieved through clonal reproduction (biomass doubling in 48 h) under optimal cultivation conditions. Considering the well-recognized benefits of these plants as a platform for production of pharmaceutical proteins ( Gasdaska et al, 2003 ; Stomp, 2005 ; Everett et al, 2012 ; Yang et al, 2021 ), Lemnaceae species are promising host organisms for developing efficient transient expression systems that will be compatible with fully contained cultivation.…”

Microstructure observations of Lemna aequinoctialis ecotype

“…Duckweeds have also made their way in genetic engineering because of the speed of their growth. The recent development is the usage of duckweeds as bioreactors (Yang, 2021).…”

Estabelecimento de protocolo de cultura de tecidos e transformação genética para três genótipos de >i<Lemnoideae>/i<

“…Essas pequenas plantas aquáticas também tem sido foco em estudos farmacológicos, onde, em biorreatores, podem produzir compostos como proteínas recombinantes (STOMP 2005;YANG et al, 2021a), a partir de plantas transformadas geneticamente (HE et al, 2008;FIRSOV et al, 2015). Por acumularem biomassa rapidamente, também se tornam interessantes para produção de biocombustíveis de segunda geração (ZHAO et al, 2012; NAHAR e SUNNY, 2020), além de promoverem a fitorremediação de ambientes com águas contaminadas (GIMENES, 2015;LIMA, 2018).…”