Plant proteins can be used to treat new zoonotic diseases which can limit bioterror

Globalisation and climate change have resulted in changing patterns of the emergence and global spread of infectious diseases. The majority of emerging infectious diseases are  or vector-borne with over 85 such diseases discovered since 1980 [1]. Notable cases, including highly pathogenic avian influenza (H5N1) and  (SARS) among others, have highlighted the difficulty in predicting zoonotic disease outbreaks. Vaccination is a crucial tool in combatting  and the spread of circulating pathogens, and is central to the One Health paradigm that acknowledges the interaction between human and animal health, as well as the influence of the environmental and social context [2]. Addressing infectious disease within this framework requires, above all, responsive protein production. The maturation of plant-based  has demonstrated that this technology is able to meet this requirement for both human and animal health [3,4].

Around the turn of the century, transient transformation of plant tissues emerged as an alternative mode of  [5] that has created new opportunities for  in biologics production [],  [6] and synthetic biology [7]. Introducing disarmed  strains carrying binary vectors into the leaves of whole plants, known as , results in T-DNA delivery to all cells in the area infiltrated with bacterial suspension. This approach has three considerable benefits for  production in infectious disease prevention and preparedness: (i) it enables easily scalable and rapid upstream processes, (ii) it allows straightforward multiplexing of gene constructs (gene stacking), and (iii) it decouples host cell engineering from plant viability and biomass accumulation (Figure 1). The implications of these advantages with regard to responsive vaccine production, and recent technological advances complementing these features, are the subject of this review.