ABSTRACT
In the present-day scenario, where viral nanoparticles (VNPs) are being deployed in diverse elds ranging from material science to medicine, the need to develop versatile expression systems for the efcient production of such nanoparticles is essential. Plants represent an attractive platform for the production of VNPs since they offer several advantages over established bacterial, yeast, insect cell, mammalian cell, and cell-free production systems. These include high biomass, ease of scalability, cost-effectiveness and a low risk of contamination with endotoxins or human pathogens [1-3]. In addition, unlike prokaryotic expression systems, plants are capable of introducing eukaryotic posttranslational modi- cations such as glycosylation and hence can be used for the production of VNPs that assemble from complex eukaryotic proteins. Further, for VNPs that are being developed as vaccine candidates, their expression in plants offers the possibility of oral administration of the VNP [4].
