The invention relates to genetically modified plants and progeny thereof
which constitute edible plant-derived mucosal vaccines and injectable
plant-derived mucosal vaccines against Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome
(SARS). The invention relates to a recombinant vector that transforms
specifically, but not limited to, the nuclei and/or plastids of tobacco,
tomato and lettuce plants for antigen production. In specific
embodiments, the plastid transformation vector expressing the nucleotide
sequences are pCV1, pCV6 and pCV8, and their derivatives containing an S1
with nucleotide (but not amino acid) changes to optimize codon usage for
expression in plants. The present invention relates to methods of making
the modified plants which comprises transformation of plants with vectors
for nuclear expression and/or plastid expression of nucleotide sequences
of the SARS-CoV virus, fragments, derivatives, analogs, or variants
thereof. The present invention also relates to methods of immunization
against SARS and methods of antibody detection using the SARS-CoV
antigens generated by the plastid and/or nuclear vector(s) transformed
plants.