Processing of recombinant proteins in agroinfiltrated leaves of Nicotiana benthamiana

Plants have offered humans medicinal products since antiquity, but recently, the advancements in plant genetic engineering and the growth of the global bioeconomy have led to significant benefits in their application on recombinant protein production. All these improvement tools that have emerged in the last 30 years can be described as part of Plant Molecular Pharming. Plant systems can offer a promising platform for recombinant protein production, providing both inexpensive cultivation and high scalability. Nevertheless, endogenous proteases may degrade heterologously expressed proteins, thus affecting the overall yield and/or functionality. This study will focus on the identification of N. benthamiana proteases involved in the degradation of immunoglobulin G (IgG). The DPhil will explore several objectives, including IgG cleavage sites identification, localisation of degradation, and screening for intact IgGs. Finally, we may investigate the role of sequence and structure variation in antibody processing from proteases.