New tools for chloroplast genetic engineering allow the synthesis of human growth hormone in the green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii.

ABSTRACT: In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in the exploitation of microalgae in industrial biotechnology. Potentially, these phototrophic eukaryotes could be used for the low-cost synthesis of valuable recombinant products such as bioactive metabolites and therapeutic proteins. The algal chloroplast in particular represents an attractive target for such genetic engineering, both because it houses major metabolic pathways and because foreign genes can be targeted to specific loci within the chloroplast genome, resulting in high-level, stable expression. However, routine methods for chloroplast genetic engineering are currently available only for one species-Chlamydomonas reinhardtii-and even here, there are limitations to the existing technology, including the need for an expens

SUBMITTER: Wannathong T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4875957 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature