During the evolution of the eukaryotic cell, plastids, and mitochondria arose from an endosymbiotic process, which determined the presence of three genetic compartments into the incipient plant cell. After that, these three genetic materials from host and symbiont suffered several rearrangements, bringing on a complex interaction between nuclear and organellar gene products. Nowadays, plastids ...

Plant genetic engineering will likely contribute to the required continued increase in agricultural productivity during the coming decades. Moreover, plants can potentially provide inexpensive production platforms for pharmaceuticals and nutraceuticals. With the advent of technologies to alter the genetic information inside plastids (chloroplasts), a new attractive target for genetic engineerin...

As already demonstrated in greenhouse trials, outcrossing of transgenic plants can be drastically reduced via transgene integration into the plastid. We verified this result in the field with Petunia, for which the highest paternal leakage has been observed. The variety white 115 (W115) served as recipient and Pink Wave (PW) and the transplastomic variant PW T16, encoding the uidA reporter gene...

The recent development of homologous recombination-mediated gene targeting (GT) techniques has made it easy to modify nucleotide sequences in plant genomes. Backcross breeding following GT provides transgene-free lines with high probability. However, owing the possibility unintentional transgene introduction during genetic transformation, analytical methods may be necessary reliably and compreh...

ankyloglossia (tongue-tie) is a congenital anomaly with a prevalence of 4-5% and characterized by an abnormally short lingual frenulum. for unknown reasons the abnormality seems to be more common in males. the pathogenesis of ankyloglossia is not known. the authors report a family with isolated ankyloglossia inherited as an autosomal dominant or recessive trait. the identification of the defect...

Sugarcane (Saccharum spp.) is one of the most valuable food and industrial crops. Its production constrained due to major biotic (fungi, bacteria, viruses insect pests) abiotic (drought, salt, cold/heat, water logging heavy metals) stresses. The ever-increasing demand for sugar biofuel rise new pest disease variants call use innovative technologies speed up sugarcane genetic improvement process...