Patent ID: 8093458

Claim:
A process of producing a protein of interest by expressing a sequence of interest in a plant or in plant leaves, comprising: (a) transfecting said plant or said plant leaves with an Agrobacterium strain in the presence or in the absence of a complementing factor, said Agrobacterium strain containing in T-DNA a heterologous DNA sequence having a sequence portion encoding a replicon, wherein said sequence encoding a replicon contains (i) sequences necessary for replicon function of said replicon, said sequences being derived from a plant virus, and (ii) said sequence of interest to be expressed, (b) optionally isolating said protein of interest from said plant or said plant leaves infiltrated in step (a), wherein said Agrobacterium strain is provided with a first genetic modification rendering said Agrobacterium strain defective for transfecting organisms with said T-DNA in the absence of said complementing factor, and wherein said plant or said plant leaves are infiltrated in step (a) with a suspension of said Agrobacterium strain, said suspension having a concentration of cells of said Agrobacterium strain corresponding to a calculated optical density at 600 nm of at most 0.04.