Increasing Lactostatin in Biotech Rice Using Soybean Protein as Carrier

Hypercholesterolemia, a cardiovascular disease caused by obesity and unhealthy lifestyle, is one of the serious illnesses that cause a significant number of deaths globally. Lactostatin, a bioactive peptide derived from β-lactoglobulin in cow's milk, is a known drug for treatment of hypercholesterolemia. Thus, scientist Cerrone Cabanos from Kyoto University and colleagues developed biotech rice producing high amounts of lactostatin by inserting 29 IIAEK sequences into the structurally flexible regions of soybean seed storage protein, A1aB1b, and introducing it into LGC-1 (low glutelin content mutant 1) as host variety.

The storage protein with 29 lactostatins was expressed in the endosperm of rice seed cells by using seed specific promoters and classified into new compartments that are different from the normal storage structures. The biotech seeds produced 2mg of lactostatin/g of dry seeds, which is significantly higher than the usual. These results suggest that the use of a high copy number of bioactive peptide into seed storage proteins as carrier is an effective strategy to improve the levels of bioactive peptides in rice.

Read the research article at http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11248-012-9672-5.