Mass production of proteins through field-grown transgenic plants provides a less expensive alternative to production of these molecules in bioprocessing plants. A combination of transgenic plant biology and bioprocessing plant engineering can provide the fast and inexpensive production system required by the pharmaceutical industry. Our lab has set out to establish and optimize such a system where heterologous genes are delivered and expressed transiently in plant tissues grown in bioreactor systems. This thesis attempts to construct a plasmid containing the marker gene beta-glucuronidase, with an intron, in a viral replicon. Such a plasmid will provide control of time and location of the marker gene replication, transcription and translation in the culture system, thus allowing study and optimization of the protein production. Although the cloning strategy was clear, several complicating factors resulted in unsuccessful construction of this vector. Subsequent attempts with altered strategies such as varying ligation temperatures, concentrations of substrates, and alkaline phosphate treatment procedures failed to produce the desired clone. This thesis provides detailed documentation of the DNA cloning effort to provide a reference for future cloning work.