New Advances in Plant and Algae Molecular Farming

Dear Colleagues,

Over past three decades, plants, and subsequently algae, have emerged as alternative hosts for the production of recombinant proteins or biologically active compounds, offering sustainable and environmentally friendly platforms. Initially, molecular farming was seen as appealing due to its several advantages, such as the low costs of growing plants, the high scalability of agricultural production, and the absence of human pathogens or their toxins. Furthermore, similarly to other eukaryotic systems, plants, and algae make it possible to produce, correctly fold, and post-translationally modify complex proteins. Although in the past few years several hosts and/or expression technologies have been successfully developed, molecular farming does not have a track record of success at the commercial level, especially for pharmaceutical products, mainly due to the lack of standardized methods and good manufacturing practices. Recently, the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic has posed several global challenges, refocusing the attention toward the development of new concepts of plant/algae molecular farming.

The goal of this Special Issue is to provide new advances in the field of biotechnology to produce different molecules with diverse industrial applications.

In particular, this issue is open to research articles and reviews focused on different biotechnologies (transient expression platforms, stable genetic transformation methods, cell factories, etc.) or phototrophic organisms that are able to produce recombinant proteins and/or bioactive compounds.

Dr. Nunzia Scotti
Guest Editor

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