Industrial protein production crops: new needs and new opportunities

There are many diverse uses for industrial proteins with new opportunities for novel uses frequently emerging. Prominent among these uses are enzymes catalyzing the processing of food/feed and for the production of cellulosic biofuels. Other significant industrial protein uses include antibodies and other binding proteins for purification and/or clean-up of industrial product streams. Enabling technology is needed to produce these now expensive industrial proteins could be produced cost-effectively. Plant-based production of industrial enzymes offers the prospect of massive, scalable production, coupled with low production cost especially if a co-product, such as seed oil or starch, subsidizes the primary crop production costs. High-protein seeds whose composition is remodeled to produce industrial proteins can be a cost-effective means to produce industrial proteins. There are both technical and regulatory issues to resolve in order to deploy plants and seeds as industrial protein production platforms and many of these issues may be more easily resolved by developing nonfood crops specifically for use as industrial production platforms. An emerging industrial plant, Camelina, has potential as a protein-production platform subsidized by the seed oil co-product.