Collagen producing plants and methods of generating and using same

摘要

Provided is a method of producing collagen or procollagen in a plant or an isolated plant cell comprising targeting to a vacuole of the plant or the isolated plant cell at least one type of a collagen chain and an exogenous prolyl-4-hydroxylase (P4H) so as to allow hydroxylation of said at least one type of said collagen chain by said exogenous P4H and not by an endogenous P4H of the plant or isolated plant cell, wherein each of said at least one type of collagen chain and said exogenous P4H comprise a signal peptide for targeting to said vacuole, thereby producing the collagen or procollagen in the plant. Further provided are accordingly genetically modified plants, nucleic acids encoding P4H attached to a vacuole targeting signal and positioned under the control of a promoter functional in plants.