Food, water, our favorite series, books, your computer. Maybe you will also need some medicines, vitamins, insulin… All those substances are necessary, but they take to much space, they are hard to conserve, its production is expensive and they are limited.
In a previous project we developed a simple and cost-effective plant-based method for production and purification of recombinant proteins. The system was based on the production of “GBSS::TP” plants transiently expressing a target protein (TP) fused to granule-bound starch synthase (GBSS) containing a unique cleavage site recognized by a specific protease that enables the TP to be separated from the GBSS into an aqueous buffer, while the GBSS remains embedded into the starch granule. The cleaved TP can be highly purified upon a single and simple centrifugation step of protease-treated plant tissues. The aim of this project is to improve the technology by producing plants stably expressing GBSS::TP that are capable of growing under challenging conditions of low gravity, high irradiance, etc. occurring in extra-terrestrial environments. The project involves the collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC).
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