Transformation of HIV-1 Envelope Glycoprotein120 in Tobacco Plant

Abstract

HIV-1 infection which causes AIDS is still be health, social and economical problems in Thailand. Early diagnosis of HIV-1 infected individuals is one of the strategies to confine the spreading of the virus. Every year, commercial kits for HIV-1 infection diagnosis were imported to Thailand at several hundred millions Baht. The development of protein production system for using as antigens in diagnostic kit is very important for self-depending and decreasing an import of recombinant proteins and commercial kits to Thailand. In this study, tobacco plant was transformed with the entire 1515-bp of HIV-1 glycoprotein 120 (gp120) coding region by Agrobacterium-mediated gene transformation. We could demonstrate the presence of integrated gp120 coding region in the genomic DNA of transformed tobacco plants by nested-PCR, which was confirmed by sequencing. However, neither gp120 mRNA nor protein was detected. The reason that HIV-1 gp120 could not be expressed may due to an inappropriate system used in our study. Naturally, HIV-1 infects only human and use human’s advance machinery to produce all viral proteins. Furthermore, gp-120 is expressed as gp160 precursor, which then cleaved into gp120 and gp41 during viral maturation. The research and development of transgenic plant or other organisms to produce such a special protein likes HIV-1 gp120 would be desired.