An efficient transient expression system has been developed and characterized for the production of foreign genes in seedlings. The seedlings can be easily produced from commercial seeds used for vegetable sprouts. In principal, a chemical abrasive was employed to generate wounds in seedlings prior to vacuum-infiltration with Agrobacterium tumefaciens bearing the target gene. This optimized chemical wounding-assisted agro-infiltration process resulted in up to 15-fold increase in β -glucuronidase (GUS) enzyme activity. This procedure has been used efficiently to express hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) protein in a transient mode. Therefore, seedlings with proper wounds can be suggested as a convenient tool for the production of useful recombinant proteins.

ABSTRACT
 I. INTRODUCTION
 II. MATERIALS and METHODS
  2.1 Seedling growth and wounding
  2.2 Agro-infiltration
  2.4 DNA blot hybridization
  2.5 Western blotting and ELISA
 III. RESULTS and DISCUSSION
 Ⅳ. Acknowledgement
 ≫ Literature Cited

• Jang-Won Choi(Dept. Bio-Industry, Daegu Univ.)