Modified Mushrooms for Biopharmaceuticals?

Scientists are now tinkering with mushrooms as potential vehicles of various beneficial human drugs, or biopharmaceuticals. Charles Peter Romaine and his colleague, Xi Chen, of Penn State University have developed a technique to genetically modify Agaricus bisporus, the button variety of mushroom.

To create transgenic mushrooms, researchers attached a gene that confers resistance to hygromycin, an antibiotic, to circular pieces of bacterial DNA called plasmids. The researchers then snipped small pieces off the mushroom's gill tissue and added it to a flask containing the altered bacterium. As the bacterium goes through its lifecycle, it transfers a portion of its plasmid out of its cell right into the mushroom cell, and integrates the introduced gene into the mushroom. When the researchers exposed the mushroom cells to hygromycin, the antibiotic kills all the normal cells, separating out those that have been genetically altered for resistance.

The test demonstrates that if a second gene, insulin for example, were to be patched in the plasmid, that gene would be expressed as well. Researchers point out that the process of producing biopharmaceuticals is potentially faster and cheaper with mushrooms than conventional technologies because of shorter growth cycles and easy storage.

Read the news release at http://live.psu.edu/story/24823.