Engineering chloroplasts: an alternative site for foreign genes, proteins, reactions and products

Plant genetic engineering via the nucleus is a mature technology that has been used very productively for research and commercial biotechnology. By contrast, the ability to introduce foreign genes at specific locations on a chloroplast’s chromosome has been aquired relatively recently. Certain limitations of nuclear genome transformation methods might be overcome by the site-specific introduction of genes into plastid chromosomes. In addition, plastids, mitochondria and other subcellular organelles might provide more favorable environments than the nuclear–cytoplasmic compartment for certain biochemical reactions and for accumulating large amounts of some gene and enzyme products.