ta. The E. coli derived IL6 was found at,21 kDa, which correspond to the molecular size of the mere amino acid sequence of mature IL6. Crude leaf extracts from T0 plants were used for IL6 bioassays based on in vitro cell proliferation in a murine cell line dependent Expression of Human IL6 in Tobacco ER-targeted antibody 14D9 recorded a more than 10-fold difference between the two tissues, with 5% TSP achieved in leaves and only 0.4% TSP in seeds. The CaMV 35S promoter is thought to be less active in seeds than in leaves, explaining the difference observed by Petrucelli et al.. Our results may indicate that the lower promoter activity in seeds is 10 Expression of Human IL6 in Tobacco 11 Expression of Human IL6 in Tobacco compensated by the lower endogenous AT 7867 proteolytic activity resulting in greater IL6 accumulation in the seeds. The vacuolar version IL6 was almost six times more abundant in seeds than in leaves, based on percentage TSP. This may reflect the greater number of PSVs in seeds compared to leaves, and/or the species-dependent and tissue-specific functionality of sorting determinants. Some proteins equipped with sorting determinants are correctly targeted in some tissues and incorrectly targeted in others of the same plant. For example, vacuolar targeting of the DP1B protein, expressed in Arabidopsis thaliana, did show a tissue-specific impact on the stability and yield of recombinant protein. IL6 may therefore be targeted to lytic vacuoles in leaves and to 16722652 PSVs in seeds. Even with 
correct targeting, the vacuolar sorting of IL6 produced lower yields than ER sorting, which can be regarded as the most suitable targeting strategy. The transient expression of IL6 is more efficient in N. benthamiana than in commercial tobacco cultivars Transient expression systems are more likely to be used for the commercial production of biopharmaceuticals at least in the short term because they can be established and scaled more rapidly than transgenic plants. We therefore investigated the transient expression of IL6 in tobacco plants and found that the recombinant protein could be produced at levels up to 7% of TSP in N. benthamiana, approximately three orders of magnitude higher than the transgenic plants. The relatively poor performance of the transgenic plants is likely to reflect the importance of protein degradation over prolonged timescales, which can be overcome by the rapid and prodigious synthesis that can be achieved using viral replicons followed by harvesting after a few days, before significant degradation takes place. This strategy has been deployed successfully with other unstable proteins, including the hepatitis B virus surface antigen, which accumulated at less than 0.01% TSP in transgenic tobacco leaves but up to 0.26% TSP using the MagnICON system, and the LTB-MUC1 protein which achieved yields of 3% TSP by transient expression. Protein stability is the main limitation in transient expression because stable proteins can be produced at extraordinary yields, e.g. up to 80% TSP in the case of the highly-resistant marker protein GFP. The accumulation of recombinant IL6 can possibly be enhanced by expressing them as fusion with partner proteins that improve stability. This has been achieved by expressing proteins with cholera 12484537 toxin B subunit, viral coat proteins, ubiquitin, b-glucuronidase and human immunoglobulin. The fusion to seed storage proteins like natural zein, synthetic elastin-like protein and fungal hydrophobins might b