Dr. Lev G. Nemchinov
Research Molecular Biologist
USDA-ARS-PSI-MPPL
Lev.Nemchinov@ARS.USDA.GOV
Phone: (301)-504-5099

Our work focuses primarily on the use of plant viruses as biological expression vectors and practical applications of this technology for plant and animal disease control. The need for large quantities of safe and effective biomedicals for human and animal diseases has prompted the development and exploitation of plants as biofactories for the overproduction of therapeutic recombinant proteins. Plants represent inexpensive, environmentally friendly sources of raw materials and can be grown anywhere locally, thus eliminating the need of costly fermentation equipment. Our system uses common plant viruses, which are engineered to contain and express sufficient amounts of useful proteins of interest. When virus infects the plant, it begins to make copies of the protein which are rapidly accumulating. Those proteins then are harvested from plants, purified, and used to make therapeutics, vaccines or antimicrobials.

In addition to the development and application of plant viral-based vectors for novel disease control strategies, our goals include detection and molecular characterization of plant viral genomes, development of diagnostic methods, study of the mechanisms of viral pathogenesis and pathogen-host interaction.