Publications
NIBIOs employees contribute to several hundred scientific articles and research reports every year. You can browse or search in our collection which contains references and links to these publications as well as other research and dissemination activities. The collection is continously updated with new and historical material.
2023
Authors
O. Janne Kjønaas Ryan Bright Gro Hylen Teresa Gómez de la Bárcena Jørn-Frode Nordbakken Tonje Økland Sunil Mundra Håvard Kauserud Mette Hansen Morten Simonsen Carlo Leandro AallAbstract
No abstract has been registered
Authors
Hang Su Andre van Eerde Espen Rimstad Ralph Bock Norica Branza-Nichita Igor A. Yakovlev Jihong Liu ClarkeAbstract
Plants provide not only food and feed, but also herbal medicines and various raw materials for industry. Moreover, plants can be green factories producing high value bioproducts such as biopharmaceuticals and vaccines. Advantages of plant-based production platforms include easy scale-up, cost effectiveness, and high safety as plants are not hosts for human and animal pathogens. Plant cells perform many post-translational modifications that are present in humans and animals and can be essential for biological activity of produced recombinant proteins. Stimulated by progress in plant transformation technologies, substantial efforts have been made in both the public and the private sectors to develop plant-based vaccine production platforms. Recent promising examples include plant-made vaccines against COVID-19 and Ebola. The COVIFENZ® COVID-19 vaccine produced in Nicotiana benthamiana has been approved in Canada, and several plant-made influenza vaccines have undergone clinical trials. In this review, we discuss the status of vaccine production in plants and the state of the art in downstream processing according to good manufacturing practice (GMP). We discuss different production approaches, including stable transgenic plants and transient expression technologies, and review selected applications in the area of human and veterinary vaccines. We also highlight specific challenges associated with viral vaccine production for different target organisms, including lower vertebrates (e.g., farmed fish), and discuss future perspectives for the field.
Authors
Ana-Maria Madalina Pantazica Andre van Eerde Mihaela-Olivia Dobrica Iuliana Caras Irina Ionescu Adriana Costache Catalin Tucureanu Hege Særvold Steen Catalin Lazar Inger Heldal Sissel Haugslien Adrian Onu Crina Stavaru Norica Branza-Nichita Jihong Liu ClarkeAbstract
The recent SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has taught the world a costly lesson about the devastating consequences of viral disease outbreaks but also, the remarkable impact of vaccination in limiting life and economic losses. Vaccination against human Hepatitis B Virus (HBV), a major human pathogen affecting 290 million people worldwide, remains a key action towards viral hepatitis elimination by 2030. To meet this goal, the development of improved HBV antigens is critical to overcome non-responsiveness to standard vaccines based on the yeast-produced, small (S) envelope protein. We have recently shown that combining relevant immunogenic determinants of S and large (L) HBV proteins in chimeric antigens markedly enhances the anti-HBV immune response. However, the demand for cost-efficient, high-quality antigens remains challenging. This issue could be addressed by using plants as versatile and rapidly scalable protein production platforms. Moreover, the recent generation of plants lacking β-1,2-xylosyltransferase and α-1,3-fucosyltransferase activities (FX-KO), by CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing, enables production of proteins with “humanized” N-glycosylation. In this study, we investigated the impact of plant N-glycosylation on the immunogenic properties of a chimeric HBV S/L vaccine candidate produced in wild-type and FX-KO Nicotiana benthamiana. Prevention of β-1,2-xylose and α-1,3-fucose attachment to the HBV antigen significantly increased the immune response in mice, as compared with the wild-type plant-produced counterpart. Notably, the antibodies triggered by the FX-KO-made antigen neutralized more efficiently both wild-type HBV and a clinically relevant vaccine escape mutant. Our study validates in premiere the glyco-engineered Nicotiana benthamiana as a substantially improved host for plant production of glycoprotein vaccines.
Abstract
No abstract has been registered
2022
Abstract
No abstract has been registered
Abstract
No abstract has been registered
Authors
Simo Maduna Adam Vivian-Smith Ólöf Dóra Bartels Jónsdóttir Albert Imsland Cornelya Klutsch Tommi Nyman Hans Geir Eiken Snorre HagenAbstract
We determined the mitogenome of Cyclopterus lumpus using a hybrid sequencing approach, and another four closely related species in the Liparidae based on available next-generation sequence data. We found that the mitogenome of C. lumpus was 17,266 bp in length, where the length and organisation were comparable to those reported for cottoids. However, we found a GC-homopolymer region in the intergenic space between tRNALeu2 and ND1 in liparids and cyclopterids. Phylogenetic reconstruction confirmed the monophyly of infraorders and firmly supported a sister-group relationship between Cyclopteridae and Liparidae. Purifying selection was the predominant force in the evolution of cottoid mitogenomes. There was significant evidence of relaxed selective pressures along the lineage of deep-sea fish, while selection was intensified in the freshwater lineage. Overall, our analysis provides a necessary expansion in the availability of mitogenomic sequences and sheds light on mitogenomic adaptation in Cottoidei fish inhabiting different aquatic environments.
Authors
Simon Weldon Bert van der Veen Eva Farkas Nazli Pelin Kocatürk Schumacher Alba Dieguez-Alonso Alice Budai Daniel RasseAbstract
Sorption of nutrients such as NH4+ is often quoted as a critical property of biochar, explaining its value as a soil amendment and a filter material. However, published values for NH4+ sorption to biochar vary by more than 3 orders of magnitude, without consensus as to the source of this variability. This lack of understanding greatly limits our ability to use quantitative sorption measurements towards product design. Here, our objective was to conduct a quantitative analysis of the sources of variability, and infer which biochar traits are more favourable to high sorption capacity. To do so, we conducted a standardized remodelling exercise of published batch sorption studies using Langmuir sorption isotherm. We excluded studies presenting datasets that either could not be reconciled with the standard Langmuir sorption isotherm or generated clear outliers. Our analysis indicates that the magnitude of sorption capacity of unmodified biochar for NH4+ is lower than previously reported, with a median of 4.2 mg NH4+ g−1 and a maximum reported sorption capacity of 22.8 mg NH4+ g−1. Activation resulted in a significant relative improvement in sorption capacity, but absolute improvements remain modest, with a maximum reported sorption of 27.56 mg NH4+ g−1 for an activated biochar. Methodology appeared to substantially impact sorption estimates, especially practices such as pH control of batch sorption solution and ash removal. Our results highlight some significant challenges in the quantification of NH4+ sorption by biochar and our curated data set provides a potentially valuable scale against which future estimates can be assessed.
Authors
Paul Eric Aspholm Simo Maduna Juho Matti Vuolteenaho Cornelya Klutsch Hallvard Jensen Ida Marie Luna Fløystad Ingrid Helle Søvik Ane-Sofie Bednarczyk Hansen Benedicte Beddari Helena Klöckener Snorre HagenAbstract
No abstract has been registered
Abstract
No abstract has been registered