The efficient delivery of proteins into plastids is key to using plastid protein engineering in biotechnology applications, a fact that is often overlooked. This study identifies transit peptides that efficiently import different passenger proteins into major plastid types across plant species, offering an effective tool for manipulating plastid-related traits.
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References
Chu, C. C., Swamy, K. & Li, H. M. Tissue-specific regulation of plastid protein import via transit-peptide motifs. Plant Cell 32, 1204–1217 (2020). This paper indicates that the tissue-specific regulation of plastid protein import is due to the selective evolutionary retention of specific transit peptide motifs.
Wan, J., Blakeley, S. D., Dennis, D. T. & Ko, K. Transit peptides play a major role in the preferential import of proteins into leucoplasts and chloroplasts. J. Biol. Chem. 271, 31227–31233 (1996). This paper reports that how well precursor proteins are imported into leucoplasts or chloroplasts in vitro is determined by their transit peptide.
Yan, X., Khan, S., Hase, T., Emes, M. J. & Bowsher, C. G. Differential uptake of photosynthetic and non-photosynthetic proteins by pea root plastids. FEBS Lett. 580, 6509–6512 (2006). By comparing leucoplasts and chloroplasts isolated from the same plant species, this paper reports that transit peptides have a role in the differential import of precursor proteins in vitro.
Chu, C. C. & Li, H. M. Protein import into isolated pea root leucoplasts. Front. Plant Sci. 6, 690 (2015). This paper reports the optimization of an in vitro leucoplast import system that enables the import of precursor proteins into leucoplasts and chloroplasts to be quantitatively compared.
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This is a summary of: Chu, C.-C. et al. High-efficiency leucoplast transit peptides for manipulating plastid protein production. Nat. Plants https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-025-02020-x (2025).
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Identification of transit peptides that boost plastid protein import in different tissues and plant species. Nat. Plants 11, 1231–1232 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-025-02021-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-025-02021-w
