Enhancer elements for increased translation in plant plastids

Abstract From the Canadian patent

Provided are methods for increasing the production of protein in a plant cell by transforming plastids of plant cells with a construct comprising a promoter functional in a plant plastid, a ribosome binding site DNA sequence of , interest and a transcription termination region and growing plant cells , comprising the transformed plastids under conditions wherein the DNA encoding sequence is transcribed in the plastid. Also provided are methods for increasing protein production by fusing a coding sequence to a gene of interest to a secondary protein for cleavage or targetting of the protein of interest within the plastid, whereby high levels of expression of protein is achieved.