PARENT SESSION
Posters P7D Chloroplast factories and transformation. Abstracts (754-758)

A new vector family for tomato chloroplast transformation. Govoni Chiara^*,1, Vantini Francesco¹, Cattivelli Luigi³, Bassi Roberto^{1, 4}, ¹ Dipartimento Scientifico e Tecnologico - Università di Verona, Verona, Italy³ Istituto sperimentale per la cerealicoltura sez. Fiorenzuola d'Arda, Fiorenzuola d'Arda, PC, Italy⁴ Université Aix-Marseille II, LGBP (Laboratoire de Genetique et Biophysique des Plantes), Marseille, France

ABSTRACT- The plastid genome is an attractive target for plant engineering, since it gives several advantages for protein expression. We developed two new vectors to induce plastid transgene expression in tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum). The integration vector p403 drives the insertion of transgene via homologue recombination by two flanking region (TrnI and TrnA genes from tomato chloroplast). The vector also contains two markers conferring resistance to spectinomycin (aadA) and betaine aldehyde (betB). Gene transcription is driven by Prrn, the promoter of rRNA plastidic operon and TpsbA, the 3′ region of psbA. A dual vector system for engineering tomato plants to express the transgene only in the berry chloroplasts has also been developed. The first vector, intended to be used for nuclear transformation of tomato contains the T7 RNA polymerase::rbcS transit peptide fusion construct under control of the fruit specific promoter Pds5231. A second vector for the transformation of the chloroplast genome was derived from p403 with the introduction of the YFP (yellow fluorescent protein) gene under the control of the promoter of the T7 gene10, the target site of T7 polymerase only. Transient expression experiments with both vectors demonstrated the efficacy of the system in tomato tissues.

KEY WORDS: Transplastomic, T7 polymerase, Tomato, betaine aldehyde