Proteins accumulated in large amounts in seeds not because of their enzymatic or structural properties but simply as a convenient source of amino acid for use when the seed germinates. They are of interest to biotechnologists:

1. As a source of protein. Much of the world's food comes from plant seeds or fruits, and much of the protein in those seeds is storage protein. Thus a substantial amount of the world's food protein comes from plant storage protein. Any improvement of the nutritional content of those proteins could correspondingly improve human diet.

2. As expression systems. Storage proteins are produced in very large amounts relative to other proteins, and are stored in stable, compact bodies in the plant seed. Several workers are seeking to make the plants produce other proteins in similarly large amounts and in as convenient a form, by splicing the gene for a desired protein into the middle of a plant storage protein gene.