A recent article in the MIT Technology Review http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/24826/page1/ discusses a new paper published in the Plant Biotechnology Journal http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/123314076/abstract by Rasala et al. at UCSD.
The article in the Tech Review describes how the Rasala et al have been successful genetically engineering a photosynthetic green algae to produce proteins used in drug production. These proteins are currently produced by cultured bacterial and mammalian cells for harvesting by the pharmaceutical industry. The idea for inserting the genes for these proteins in algae is that over the long term, algae should be much easier and cheeper to grow than mammalian cells and algae can produce more complex proteins than bacteria, therefore a better option. Its an interesting idea....
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