Iowa Farmer Today
09-29-07
Soybeans may someday be a lifesaver
By Gene Lucht, Iowa Farmer Today
AMES -- It might eventually be possible to grow therapeutic proteins in your
soybean field and either extract them for human use in pharmaceuticals or for
medicines that could be ground into animal feed.
“The idea is that soybeans might be a useful plant to use for this because they
have a high protein content,” says Diane Bassham, a researcher at Iowa State
University.
Bassham, an associate professor of genetics, development and cell biology, is
conducting a research project through ISU’s Plant Sciences Institute.
She is exploring whether useful proteins could be made by soybean plants.
The challenge is while soybeans have a high protein content, the enzymes in the
cells of the plant do a good job of breaking down those proteins, she explains.
That means while efforts to simply make a new protein into the plant may lead to
production of that protein, what often happens is the plant quickly breaks down
the new protein before it can be extracted and used by humans or animals.
Researchers must discover where in the cell the protein can be inserted so it is
not broken down and, thus, can be produced and used.
Bassham is using fluorescent proteins to mark locations and movement within
the cell to see where in the cell a protein can be safely inserted.
“We have some promising results, but we are still very much in the research
stage of this project,” she says.
Still, after scientists use fluorescent proteins to determine how and where to
insert the proteins into the soybean cells, the idea could advance quickly.
Of course, “quickly” in the biotech field often means 10 years or more in getting a
product to the market.