In order to produce low-cost biomass hydrolyzing enzymes, transplastomic lines were generated that expressed cutinase or swollenin within chloroplasts. While swollenin expressing plants were homoplasmic, cutinase transplastomic lines remained heteroplasmic. Both transplastomic lines showed interesting modifications in their phenotype, chloroplast structure, and functions. Ultrastructural analys...

In eukaryotes, many genes were transferred to the nucleus from prokaryotic ancestors of the cytoplasmic organelles during endosymbiotic evolution. In plants, the transfer of genetic material from the plastid (chloroplast) and mitochondrion to the nucleus is a continuing process. The cellular location of a kanamycin resistance gene tailored for nuclear expression (35SneoSTLS2) was monitored in t...

We tested the hypothesis that ferredoxin (Fd) limits the activity of cyclic electron flow around PSI (CEF-PSI) in vivo and that the relief of this limitation promotes the non-photochemical quenching (NPQ) of Chl fluorescence. In transplastomic tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum cv Xanthi) expressing Fd from Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) in its chloroplasts, the minimum yield (F(o)) of Chl fluoresc...

BACKGROUND Chloroplast transformation in tobacco has been used extensively to produce recombinant proteins and enzymes. Chloroplast expression cassettes can be designed with different configurations of the cis-acting elements that govern foreign gene expression. With the aim to optimize production of recombinant hemicellulases in transplastomic tobacco, we developed a set of cassettes that inco...

Anthranilate synthase (AS), the control enzyme of the tryptophan (Trp) biosynthetic pathway, is encoded by nuclear genes, but is transported into the plastids. A tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum) cDNA (ASA2) encoding a feedback-insensitive tobacco AS alpha-subunit was transformed into two different sites of the tobacco plastid genome through site-specific insertion to obtain transplastomic plants wit...

BACKGROUND Human granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (hG-CSF) can serve as valuable biopharmaceutical for research and treatment of the human blood cancer. Transplastomic plants have been emerged as a new and high potential candidate for production of recombinant biopharmaceutical proteins in comparison with transgenic plants due to extremely high level expression, biosafety and many other ad...

Cultivation-independent analyses were carried out to compare the bacterial community structure found in the rhizospheres of a transplastomic tobacco plant carrying the antibiotic resistance marker-gene aadA and its non-engineered parental line. PCR- and reverse transcriptase PCR-amplifications of 16S rRNA and their corresponding genes were carried out with primers targeting the domain Bacteria....

Cultivation-independent analyses were carried out to compare the bacterial community structure found in the rhizospheres of a transplastomic tobacco plant carrying the antibiotic resistance marker-gene aadA and its nonengineered parental line. PCRand reverse transcriptase PCR-amplifications of 16S rRNA and their corresponding genes were carried out with primers targeting the domain Bacteria. Th...