Production of recombinant proteins in plants is of increasing importance for practical applications. However, the production of stable transformed transgenic plants is a lengthy procedure. Transient expression, on the other hand, can deliver recombinant proteins within a week, and many viral vectors have been constructed for that purpose. Each of them is reported to be highly efficient, robust and cost-effective. Here, a variety of expression vectors which were designed for transient and stable plant transformation, including pPZP3425, pPZP5025, pPZPTRBO, pJLTRBO, pEAQ-HT and pBY030-2R, was compared for the expression of green fluorescent protein and β-glucuronidase in Nicotiana benthamiana by Agrobacterium-mediated transient expression. Our results show that pPZPTRBO, pJLTRBO and pEAQ-HT had comparable expression levels without co-infiltration of a RNA-silencing inhibitor. The other vectors, including the non-viral vectors pPZP5025 and pPZP3425, needed co-infiltration of the RNA-silencing inhibitor P19 to give good expression levels.
Keywords: Agroinfiltration; Recombinant protein; Transient expression; Viral vector; pPZP vector family.