Novel approach in plastid transformation

Engineering the nuclear genome of plants is perceived to be associated with problems regarding biosafety and the stability of expression of the transg ene. Alternative transformation strategies using the genomic outfit of the plastid promise to be more successful in this respect. Over the past few ye ars progress has been made in screening procedures, and plastid transformat ion technology has allowed function to be assigned to open reading frames, massive expression of insecticidal agents and proteins involved in herbicid e resistance, and the accumulation of biopolymers. Recently, the design of a novel femtoinjection technique that allows injection into chloroplasts ha s provided the opportunity to further manipulate and understand chloroplast ic gene expression.