Limitations to Chloroplast Engineering

A number of significant stumbling blocks have been identified that limit the practicality of plastid transformations the most noteworthy are mentioned here. 

Until very recently, high-efficiency chloroplast transformations have been limited to Chlamydomonas and the higher plant Tobaccum. Arabidopsis chloroplasts have been successfully transformed, but none of the regenerated transformed plants were fertile. Chloroplasts from potato leaf cells and rice suspension cells have also been transformed but with poor efficiency as well, and no fertile plants were recovered (Khan et al., 1999 Hibbard et al., 1998). Therefore, a major hurdle is the development of fertile, transgenic, economically important plants. 

3 Target Organelle for Foreign Protein Accumulation Transformation of plastids may be disadvantageous if the protein product is required to leave the plastid and go to another part of the plant cell. Unfortunately, little is known about the export of macromolecules from this organelle at present. 

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