Plastids and mitochondria have many protein complexes that include subunits encoded by organelle and nuclear genomes. In animal cells, compensatory evolution between mitochondrial and nuclear-encoded subunits was identified and the high mitochondrial mutation rates were hypothesized to drive compensatory evolution in nuclear genomes. In plant cells, compensatory evolution between plastid and nu...

During plastid division, two structures have been detected at the division site in separate analyses. The plastid-dividing ring can be detected by transmission electron microscopy as two (or three) electron-dense rings: an outer ring on the cytosolic face of the outer envelope, occasionally a middle ring in the intermembrane space, and an inner ring on the stromal face of the inner envelope. Th...

Clusterbean (Cyamopsis tetragonoloba L.), also known as guar, belongs to the family Leguminosae, and is an annual herbaceous legume. Guar is the main source of galactomannan for gas mining industries. In the present study, the draft chloroplast genome of clusterbean was generated and compared to some of the previously reported legume chloroplast genomes. The chloroplast genome of clusterbean is...

Plants are a promising expression system for the production of recombinant proteins. However, low protein productivity remains a major obstacle that limits extensive commercialization of whole plant and plant cell bioproduction platform. Plastid genetic engineering offers several advantages, including high levels of transgenic expression, transgenic containment via maternal inheritance, and mul...

Genetic engineering of chloroplasts normally requires the stable introduction of bacterial derived antibiotic or herbicide-resistance genes as selective markers. Ecological and health concerns have been raised due to the presence of such genes within the environment or the food supply. One way to overcome this issue is the use of plant genes able to confer a metabolic or developmental advantage...

Plastid transformation is widely used in basic research and for biotechnological applications. Initially developed in Chlamydomonas and tobacco, it is now feasible in a broad range of species. Selection of transgenic lines where all copies of the polyploid plastid genome are transformed requires efficient markers. A number of traits have been used for selection such as photoautotrophy, resistan...

Plastids are the organelles of plants and algae that house photosynthesis and many other biochemical pathways. Plastids contain a small genome, but most of their proteins are encoded in the nucleus and posttranslationally targeted to the organelle. When plants and algae lose photosynthesis, they virtually always retain a highly reduced "cryptic" plastid. Cryptic plastids are known to exist in m...

The transcriptional machineries of plastids and mitochondria in higher plants exhibit striking similarities. All mitochondrial genes and part of the plastid genes are transcribed by related phage-type RNA polymerases. Furthermore, the majority of mitochondrial promoters and a subset of plastid promoters show a similar structural organization. We show here that the plant mitochondrial atpA promo...

BACKGROUND Photosynthetic microalgae are emerging as potential biomass feedstock for sustainable production of biofuels and value-added bioproducts. CO2 biomitigation through these organisms is considered as an eco-friendly and promising alternative to the existing carbon sequestration methods. Nonetheless, the inherent relatively low photosynthetic capacity of microalgae has hampered the pract...

The complexity of the plastid transcriptional apparatus (two or three different RNA polymerases and numerous regulatory proteins) makes it very difficult to attribute specific function(s) to its individual components. We have characterized an Arabidopsis T-DNA insertion line disrupting the nuclear gene coding for one of the six plastid sigma factors (SIG4) that regulate the activity of the plas...