Establishment of the plant cell suspension culture system for producing murine cytokine

As a preliminary approach to produce the immunologically interested molecules through the plant cell culture, we tested if the murine granulocyte-macrophage colony stimulating factor (mGM-CSF) is produced as a biologically active form through plant cell culture. The mGM-CSF gene was cloned into the plant expression vector, pBI121, and Ti-plasmid mediated transformation of tobacco leaves was conducted using Agrobacterium tumefaciens harboring recombinant mGM-CSF (rmGM-CSF) gene. Cell suspension culture was established from the leaf-derived calli of transgenic tobacco plant. Northern blot analysis indicated the expression of the introduced mGM-CSF gene in both transgenic plant and cell suspension cultures. In addition, the biological activity of rmGM-CSF from plant cell culture was confirmed by measuring the proliferation of the GM-CSF dependent FDC-P1 cells.