Norway
October 7, 2014

A research team led by Dr. Simon Geir Moller from Plastid AS Norway has used an innovative auxin plant hormone-based selection system to generate plastid transformed maize plants. Maize plants have previously proved challenging to transform due to the requirement for selection of transformants in the dark, limiting the pool of available selectable markers.

Chloroplast transformation offers a number of potential advantages with respect to stable multigene expression of stacked traits as well as increased transgene containment due to the maternal inheritance of plastids, minimizing the risk of cross-pollination with non-genetically modified plants or their relatives in the wild. Until now the company’s focus has been on the use of their novel chloroplast transformation system in models plants for recombinant protein production applications. This breakthrough lays the groundwork for further advancements in the field of maize bioengineering and for application of the Plastid AS technology in other important crop plants.

Professor Simon Moller, Chief Scientific Officer, said: “We are very excited about this breakthrough which builds on our initial work in model plants. We are now looking to work with seed breeding partners to further optimise the methodology in maize and to apply it to crops such as soybean”.   

Plastid AS is a spin out company from the University of Stavanger, Norway, which was formed in 2007 to develop and commercialise a patented plastid transformation system arising from Professor Moller’s research.

Professor Moller and his laboratory have extensive expertise in plastid biology with emphasis on plastid transformation. Now based at St John’s University (New York), Professor Moller and his team continue to develop the technology in collaboration with Plastid AS.

Website: http://www.plastid.no/

Published: October 7, 2014