Agrobacterium 2.0

Project dates: 01/01/2022 - 20/12/2022

The bacterium Agrobacterium fabrum is nature’s own genetic engineer. It naturally transfers DNA into plants to reprogram their metabolism. This property has been exploited to reprogram plants to transiently overproduce high value proteins like vaccine antigens and therapeutic antibodies.

Although Agrobacterium-mediated transient transfection is widely used and is the backbone of the plant-based biologics industry, there has been little effort devoted to engineering the Agrobacterium itself to improve plant transfection and subsequent protein yields.

Several feedback mechanisms limit Agrobacterium-mediated transfection to maintain homeostasis between the bacterium and its host. We aim to interrupt these signalling pathways to understand whether transient heterologous protein expression in plants can be boosted further.

Chief Investigator

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Project funding