Tobacco Plants Contribute Key Ingredient For COVID-19 Vaccine
Historically, tobacco plants are responsible for their share of illness and death. Now they may help control the COVID-19 pandemic.
Two biotech companies are using the tobacco plant, Nicotiana benthamiana, as bio-factories to produce a key protein from the coronavirus that can be used in a vaccine.
"There's obvious irony there," says James Figlar, executive vice president for research and development for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco. Reynolds owns Kentucky BioProcessing, one of the companies working on a COVID-19 vaccine from plants....