Molecular Pharming of the Recombinant Protein hEGF-hEGF Concatenated with Oleosin Using Transgenic Arabidopsis

We set out to assess the NIH/3T3 cell proliferation activity of Arabidopsis oil body-expressed recombinant oleosin-hEGF-hEGF protein. Normally, human epidermal growth factor (hEGF) is purified through complex process, however, oleosin fusion technology provides an inexpensive and scalable platform for its purification. Under a phaseolin promoter, we concatenated oleosin gene to double hEGF (hEGF-hEGF) with plant-preferred codons in the expression vectors and the construct was transformed into Arabidopsis thaliana (Arabidopsis). The transgenic Arabidopsis was validated by RT-PCR and the content of recombinant protein oleosin-hEGF-hEGF was quantified by western blot. Subsequently, the proliferation assay and transdermal absorption were determined by MTT method and immunohistochemical staining, respectively. First, the expression level of hEGF was recorded to be 14.83-ng/μL oil body and due to smaller size transgenic oil bodies expressing the recombinant oleosin-hEGF-hEGF, they were more skin permeable than those of control. Second, via the staining intensity of transgenic oil bodies was greater than EGF at all time points via immunohistochemical staining in transdermal absorption process. Lastly, activity assays of oil bodies expressed oleosin-hEGF-hEGF indicated that they stimulated the NIH/3T3 cell proliferation activity. Our results revealed oil-body-expressed oleosin-hEGF-hEGF was potential new material having implications in the field of medicine.