Chapters authored
Biotechnological Applications of Plastid Foreign Gene Expression
Chloroplast is responsible for the major metabolic process photosynthesis. These organelles have their own genome and in the last three decades, the chloroplast genome has been broadly studied and manipulated through genetic engineering tools. The transfer of genes into chloroplast provides advantage over the insertion of transgene into nuclear genome, including overexpression of foreign protein, no positional effects, absence of epigenetic effects and uniparental inheritance of the transgenes, the ability to express multiple transgenes in operons and the possibility of eliminate the marker gene after the transformation and integration of the foreign gene. Now more than 100 transgenes have been reported stably integrated into the chloroplast genome including genes encoding enzymes with industrial value, biomaterials, biopharmaceuticals, vaccines and genes with agronomic trails. The chloroplast genetic tools have been implemented in several important crops. So, the chloroplast engineering technology has been positioned as the most important for the production of proteins and metabolites with biotechnological applications.
Part of the book: Plant Growth and Regulation