title: Breakthrough in chloroplast genetic engineering of agronomically important crops.
abstract: Chloroplast genetic engineering offers several unique advantages, including high-level transgene expression, multi-gene engineering in a single transformation event and transgene containment by maternal inheritance, as well as a lack of gene silencing, position and pleiotropic effects and undesirable foreign DNA. More than 40 transgenes have been stably integrated and expressed using the tobacco chloroplast genome to confer desired agronomic traits or express high levels of vaccine antigens and biopharmaceuticals. Despite such significant progress, this technology has not been extended to major crops. However, highly efficient soybean, carrot and cotton plastid transformation has recently been accomplished through somatic embryogenesis using species-specific chloroplast vectors. This review focuses on recent exciting developments in this field and offers directions for further research and development.
authors.affiliation: Department of Molecular Biology and Microbiology, University of Central Florida, Biomolecular Science, Orlando, FL 32816-2364, USA. daniell@mail.ucf.edu
authors.forename: Henry
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Daniell
authors.forename: Shashi
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kumar
authors.forename: Nathalie
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Dufourmantel
mesh_terms: D018556:Crops, Agricultural / Q000235:genetics*; D005818:Genetic Engineering / Q000379:methods / Q000639:trends*; D030821:Plants, Genetically Modified / Q000235:genetics*; D018087:Plastids / Q000235:genetics*; D019076:Transgenes