Most plastid proteins are encoded by their nuclear genomes and need to be targeted across multiple envelope membranes. In vascular plants, the translocons at the outer and inner envelope membranes of chloroplasts (TOC and TIC, respectively) facilitate transport across the two plastid membranes. In contrast, several algal groups harbor more complex plastids, the so-called secondary plastids, whi...

Chloroplasts, or photosynthetic plastids, multiply by binary fission, forming a homogeneous population in plant cells. In Arabidopsis thaliana, the division apparatus (or division ring) of mesophyll chloroplasts includes an inner envelope transmembrane protein ARC6, a cytoplasmic dynamin-related protein ARC5 (DRP5B), and members of the FtsZ1 and FtsZ2 families of proteins, which co-assemble in ...

Diatoms and a variety of other algae evolved by secondary endocytobiosis, i.e. by uptake of a eukaryotic alga into a eukaryotic host cell and the subsequent transformation of the endosymbiont into an organelle. Due to this explicit evolutionary history diatoms possess plastids bound by four membranes. Nucleus encoded plastid preproteins in diatoms have N-terminal bipartite presequences consisti...

DNA-containing cellular compartments in plant cells are the nucleus, plastids, and mitochondria. The nuclear genome, encoding approximately 29,000 to 32,000 genes, is the most common target for biotechnological applications. The number of genes encoded by the plastid and mitochondrial genomes is much smaller, approximately 120 and approximately 60, respectively. The number of processes that may...

doi:10.1093/molbev/msv247 Proposal of a Twin Aarginine Translocator System-Mediated Constraint against Loss of ATP Synthase Genes from Nonphotosynthetic Plastid Genomes Ryoma Kamikawa, Goro Tanifuji, Sohta A. Ishikawa, Ken-Ichiro Ishii, Yusei Matsuno, Naoko T. Onodera, Ken-Ichiro Ishida, Tetsuo Hashimoto, Hideaki Miyashita, Shigeki Mayama, and Yuji Inagaki Mol. Biol. Evol. 32(10):2598–2604. 201...

The well-characterized secretory glycoprotein, rice (Oryza sativa) alpha-amylase isoform I-1 (AmyI-1), was localized within the plastids and proved to be involved in the degradation of starch granules in the organelles of rice cells. In addition, a large portion of transiently expressed AmyI-1 fused to green fluorescent protein (AmyI-1-GFP) colocalized with a simultaneously expressed fluorescen...

DNA barcodes can facilitate identification of organisms especially when morphological characters are limited or unobservable. To what extent this potential is realized in specific groups of plants remains to be determined. Libraries of barcode sequences from well-studied authoritatively identified plants represented by herbarium voucher specimens are needed in order for DNA barcodes to serve th...

The use of a nonlethal selection scheme, most often using the aadA gene that confers resistance to spectinomycin and streptomycin, has been considered critical for recovery of plastid transformation events. In this study, the plastid-lethal markers, glyphosate or phosphinothricin herbicides, were used to develop a selection scheme for plastids that circumvents the need for integration of an ant...

Although leaf chloroplast transformation technology was developed more than a decade ago, no reports exist of stable transformation of undeveloped plastids or other specialized plastid types, such as proplastids, etioplasts, or amyloplasts. In this work we report development of a dark-grown tobacco suspension cell model system to investigate the transformation potential of undeveloped plastids....

'Whirly' proteins comprise a plant-specific protein family whose members have been described as DNA-binding proteins that influence nuclear transcription and telomere maintenance, and that associate with nucleoids in chloroplasts and mitochondria. We identified the maize WHY1 ortholog among proteins that coimmunoprecipitate with CRS1, which promotes the splicing of the chloroplast atpF group II...