Plastid production of protein antibiotics against pneumonia via a new strategy for high-level expression of antimicrobial proteins.

ABSTRACT: Plastid transformation has become an attractive tool in biotechnology. Because of the prokaryotic nature of the plastid's gene expression machinery, expression elements (promoters and untranslated regions) that trigger high-level foreign protein accumulation in plastids usually also confer high expression in bacterial cloning hosts. This can cause problems, for example, when production of antimicrobial compounds is attempted. Their bactericidal activity can make the cloning of the corresponding genes in plastid transformation vectors impossible. Here, we report a general solution to this problem. We have designed a strategy (referred to as toxin shuttle) that allows the expression in plastids of proteins that are toxic to Escherichia coli. The strategy is based on blocking transcription in

SUBMITTER: Oey M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2662961 | biostudies-literature | 2009 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature