Generation, analysis, and transformation of macro-chloroplast Potato (Solanum tuberosum) lines for chloroplast biotechnology

Abstract

Chloroplast biotechnology is a route for novel crop metabolic engineering. The potential bio-confinement of transgenes, the high protein expression and the possibility to organize genes into operons represent considerable advantages that make chloroplasts valuable targets in agricultural biotechnology. In the last 3 decades, chloroplast genomes from a few economically important crops have been successfully transformed. The main bottlenecks that prevent efficient transformation in a greater number of crops include the dearth of proven selectable marker gene-selection combinations and tissue culture methods for efficient regeneration of transplastomic plants. The prospects of increasing organelle size are attractive from several perspectives, including an increase in the surface area of potential targets. As a proof-of-concept, we generated Solanum tuberosum (potato) macro-chloroplast lines overexpressing the tubulin-like GTPase protein gene FtsZ1 from Arabidopsis thaliana. Macro-chloroplast lines exhibited delayed growth at anthesis; however, at the time of harvest there was no significant difference in height between macro-chloroplast and wild-type lines. Macro-chloroplasts were successfully transformed by biolistic DNA-delivery and efficiently regenerated into homoplasmic transplastomic lines. We also demonstrated that macro-chloroplasts accumulate the same amount of heterologous protein than wild-type organelles, confirming efficient usage in plastid engineering. Advantages and limitations of using enlarge compartments in chloroplast biotechnology are discussed.

Document Details

Document Type
Pub Defense Publication
Publication Date
Dec 03, 2020
Source ID
10.1038/s41598-020-78237-x

Entities

People

  • Agnieszka A. Piatek
  • Alessandro Occhialini
  • Alexander C Pfotenhauer
  • Andrew J Lail
  • Henry Daniell
  • Li Li
  • Neal Stewart
  • Scott C. Lenaghan
  • Stacee A. Harbison
  • Stephen B. Rigoulot
  • Taylor P. Frazier
  • Zachary Mebane

Organizations

  • ARPA-E
  • Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency

Tags

Fields of Study

  • Environmental science

Readers

  • Aquatic Ecology
  • Molecular Genetics
  • Molecular and Cellular Biology

Technology Areas

  • Biotechnology