Plastid transformation is a powerful tool for basic research, but also for the generation of stable genetically engineered plants producing recombinant proteins at high levels or for metabolic engineering purposes. However, due to the genetic makeup of plastids and the distinct features of the transformation process, vector design, and the use of specific genetic elements, a large set of basic ...

Advances in Plastid Biology and Its Applications Plastids originated from endosymbiosis around 1.5 billion years ago. They have been extensively studied to understand photosynthesis and other metabolic functions and to express foreign proteins, and knowledge about plastids has greatly increased. However, there are many aspects of plastid biology that remain unclear, and there have been difficul...

Plant metabolic engineering has the potential to provide for the needs of an expanding population. Environmentally benign biosyntheisis of novel materials and pharmaceutical proteins along with the opportunity to improve the productivity and nutritive value of crop plants has focused considerable effort towards the genetic manipulation of crop species. The most important output traits that coul...

T ransgene containment is a central concern in genetically modified (GM) crops, especially for those with out-crossing wild relatives. However, plant cells contain genomes in the nucleus, mitochondria, and chloroplasts. Whereas nuclear genes are biparentally inherited, organelle genes are in general maternally inherited (1, 2). Therefore, engineering foreign genes in the chloroplast genome may ...

Plastid genomes show an impressive array of sizes and compactnesses, but the forces responsible for this variation are unknown. It has been argued that species with small effective genetic population sizes are less efficient at purging excess DNA from their genomes than those with large effective population sizes. If true, one may expect the primary mode of plastid inheritance to influence plas...

Retrograde signalling from the plastid to the nucleus, also known as plastid signalling, plays a key role in coordinating nuclear gene expression with the functional state of plastids. Inhibitors that cause plastid dysfunction have been suggested to generate specific plastid signals related to their modes of action. However, the molecules involved in plastid signalling remain to be identified. ...

presence of antibiotic resistance markers has always been considered as one of the main safety concerns in transgenic plants and their derived products. elimination of antibiotic selectable markers from transgenics is a major hurdle for finding efficient and safe candidates. herbicide tolerance genes might be attractive alternatives. in this study, a variant form of the 5-enoylpyruvyl shikimate...

Proteomics of chloroplast ribosomes in spinach and Chlamydomonas revealed unique protein composition and structures of plastid ribosomes. These studies have suggested the presence of some ribosomal proteins unique to plastid ribosomes which may be involved in plastid-unique translation regulation. Considering the strong background of genetic analysis and molecular biology in Arabidopsis, the in...

Red algae have the most gene-rich plastid genomes known, but despite their evolutionary importance these genomes remain poorly sampled. Here we characterize three complete and one partial plastid genome from a diverse range of florideophytes. By unifying annotations across all available red algal plastid genomes we show they all share a highly compact and slowly-evolving architecture and unique...