Plant Plastid Engineering

Wani, Shabir H.; Haider, Nadia; Kumar, Hitesh; Singh, N.B.

Up to date, many transgenes have been successfully introduced into the plastid genome of model plant tobacco and many other important crop plants for various agronomic traits. Initially, this technology was limited to model plant species, but now it has been extended to some other important crops. Still there are many agronomically important cereals crops in which plastid engineering has not yet been standardized. Plastid transformation has been proved to result in high levels of transgene expression. It has also provided a baseline for production of proteinaceous pharmaceuticals, such as antigens, antibodies and antimicrobials in a cost effective manner. Bock [27] believes that a great progress has been achieved over years in investigating the mechanisms that govern transgene expression from the plastid genome and in using this technology for biotechnological applications. We agree with the author that "the routine use of plastid engineering in biotechnology is still a long way off, but would surely benefit the humanity in the near future". There is no doubt that plastid engineering holds a great potential in plant biotechnology; but like every new technology, there are some challenges which need to be addressed before its widespread adoption. Among other important factors to be solved are the protein purification and expression level control.