Recent Developments in Design and Application of Plant Virus-based Gene Vectors

A new horizon is lit up by exploiting plant viruses as the vectors to deliver foreign genes into plants for various purposes such as production of valuable pharmaceutical proteins, to understand pathogenesis of a plant virus, and to establish gene silencing for blocking, for example, production of an undesirable intermediate metabolite in a metabolic pathway. Here, the recent patents concerning the design of new gene vectors on the basis of the genomes of the viruses including Tobacco mosaic virus (TMV), Potato virus X (PVX), Tobacco rattle virus (TRV), Cowpea mosaic virus (CPMV), Bean Yellow dwarf virus (BeYDV), Beet soil-borne mosaic virus (BSbMV) and Potato mop top virus (PMTV) will be reviewed. Also, applications of the recently designed vectors for production of foreign proteins such as human lysosomal enzymes expressed from TMV-based vectors, human and animal viral vaccines expressed from CPMV-based vectors and glucose oxidase from BSbMV-based vector will be reported. In addition, gene silencing capabilities of the vectors based on PVX and the seed coating gene delivery system will be considered.