ABSTRACT
There is virtually no place on earth where the term transgenic plant is unfamiliar. Transgenic plants were first developed and introduced as crops in the early 1980s. Their enormous commercial potential and role in crop improvement was fully realized upon the discovery that transformed plants were fertile and the foreign gene of interest could be continued throughout their progeny. The first genetically modified crops were soybean and corn, and appeared in the U.S. market in 1996. Since then, transgenic plants have been commercialized in many other countries. These, which exhibit increased pest and disease resistance, have been demonstrated to prevent substantial global production losses. Transgenic plants also present enormous potential to become one of the most cost-effective and safe systems for large-scale production of proteins for industrial, pharmaceutical, veterinary, and agricultural uses. In order to be effective, a plant-derived protein must be biologically identical to its native counterpart and be produced at levels high enough to be purified by relatively simple procedures.
