Patent ID: 7659445

Claim:
A method for producing high levels of stable plasminogen in duckweed, wherein said method comprises the steps of: (a) culturing a duckweed plant or duckweed plant cell or nodule, wherein said duckweed plant or duckweed plant cell or nodule is stably transformed with a nucleic acid molecule comprising a nucleotide sequence encoding plasminogen, wherein said nucleic acid molecule comprises: 1) duckweed-preferred codons in the coding sequence for said plasminogen; 2) an operably linked nucleotide sequence comprising a plant intron that is inserted upstream of the coding sequence for said plasminogen; 3) an operably linked nucleotide sequence coding for a signal peptide, said signal peptide-encoding sequence inserted between said intron and said plasminogen-encoding sequence; and 4) an operably linked nucleotide sequence comprising the translation leader sequence from the ribulose-bis-phosphate carboxylase small subunit 5B gene of Lemna gibba ; and (b) collecting said stable plasminogen from said duckweed plant or duckweed plant cell or nodule.