Expression of human milk proteins in transgenic plants
The invention is directed to food and food additive compositions comprising one or more human milk proteins produced in the seeds of a transgenic plant and methods of making the same. The invention is further directed to improved infant formula comprising such food supplement composition.
1. A nutritionally enhanced food comprising
one or more plant-derived food ingredients, and
as an additive, a seed composition containing a flour, extract, or malt obtained from mature monocot seeds, and wherein said flour, extract, or malt contains seed-produced human milk proteins in substantially unpurified form selected from
(i) lysozyme or lactoferrin, and one or more seed-produced human milk proteins selected from the group consisting of lactoferricin, epidermal growth factor, insulin-like growth factor-1, lactadherin, kappa-casein, haptocorrin, lactoperoxidase, and alpha-1-antitrypsin, -or
(ii) lysozyme and lactoferrin, and optionally one or more seed-produced human milk proteins selected from the group consisting of lactoferricin, epidermal growth factor, insulin-like growth factor-1, lactadherin, kappa-casein, haptocorrin, lactoperoxidase, and alpha-1-antitrypsin.
2. The food of claim 1 , wherein said the seed-produced protein(s) are lysozyme and lactoferrin.
3. The food of claim 2 , which is an infant formula, wherein said the seed-produced proteins are lysozyme, in an amount between 0.03 to 0.3 g protein/liter formula, and lactoferrin, in an amount between 0.3 to 3 g/liter formula.
4. The food of claim 1 , wherein the seed composition comprises between 0.1 to 20% of the total solid weight of the food.
5. The food of claim 4 , which is an infant milk formula, where the seed composition contains a seed extract or malt obtained from mature seeds of rice or barley.
6. An ingestible monocot-seed composition containing a flour, extract, or malt obtained from mature monocot seeds, and wherein said flour, extract, or malt contains one or more seed-produced human milk proteins in substantially unpurified form, selected from
(i) lysozyme or lactoferrin, and one or more seed-produced human milk proteins selected from the group consisting of lactoferricin, epidermal growth factor, insulin-like growth factor-1, lactadherin, kappa-casein, haptocorrin, lactoperoxidase, and alphf-1-antitrypsin, or
(ii) lysozyme and lactoferrin, and optionally one or more seed-produced human milk proteins selected from the group consisting of lactoferricin, epidermal growth factor, insulin-like growth factor-1, lactadherin, kappa-casein, haptocorrin, lactoperoxidase, and alpha-1-antitrypsin.
7. The composition of claim 6 , said the seed-produced proteins are lysozyme and lactoferrin.
8. The composition of claim 6 , wherein when said composition contains an extract, at least one of the human proteins is present in the extract in an amount greater than 1 mg/gram dry weight of extract.
9. The composition of claim 6 , wherein
(a) the flour is prepared by milling mature monocot seeds;
(b) the extract is prepared by suspending milled flour in a buffered aqueous medium; and
(c) the malt is prepared by (i) steeping barley seeds to a desired water content, (ii) germinating the steeped barley, (iii) drying the germinated seeds, under conditions effective to stop germination, (iv) crushing the dried seeds, (v) optionally, adding crushed seeds from a non-barley monocot plant, (vi) forming a mixture of crushed seeds in water, and (vii) malting the crushed seed mixture until a desired malt is achieved, where at least one of the barley or non-barley monocot seeds contain such milk protein(s).
10. The composition of claim 9 , wherein step (v) includes adding to the crushed dried barley seeds, mature rice transgenic seeds that produce a milk protein.