Abstract: Compositions and methods for transiently expressing proteins in a plant are provided. The compositions comprise plants, seeds, plant tissues, and plant parts expressing a protein, wherein the protein is expressed transiently and the transient expression of the protein can be used as a predictive model of how said protein will be expressed in stable transgenic plants in regards to qualitative and quantitative data. The predictive model may be used but is not limited to: promoter evaluation, evaluation of expression cassette construction for best performance (e.g. addition of enhancers or gene silencing suppressors), evaluation of best ways to express heterologous genes.

Abstract: The present invention provides a method of isolating nucleic acid and protein from the same biological sample, comprising, in the following order: a) disrupting the biological sample; b) contacting the disrupted biological sample of (a) with a protein lysis buffer that lacks any component that denatures or reduces protein to produce a first lysate; c) centrifuging the first lysate of (b) to produce a first supernatant containing protein and a pellet containing nucleic acid; d) removing the first supernatant of (c), thereby isolating protein from the biological sample; e) contacting the pellet of (d) with nucleic acid lysis buffer to produce a second lysate; f) centrifuging the second lysate of (e) to produce a second supernatant containing nucleic acid; and g) removing the second supernatant of (f), thereby isolating nucleic acid from the same biological sample.