Part:BBa_K1618028

Chloroplast Transit Peptide

This is synthetic a 5'UTR, omega (Tobacco Mosaic Virus. The chloroplast transit peptide provides subcellular localisation to the chloroplast.

NRP-UEA

At NRP-UEA, we used the chloroplast transit peptide in 8 of our composite constructs in order to make sure that our parts reached the chloroplast, where starch is produced. For 4 of these constructs, we included a Yellow Fluorescent Protein tag, in order to visualise if our parts did in fact reach the chloroplast. Using a confocal microscope, we were able to get the following images, in which the chloroplast is red and our protein with the fluorescent tag is yellow.

Figure 1: Constructs BBa_K1618029-032 contain a yellow fluorescent protein, as well as a chloroplast transit peptide. These are confocal microscopy images of the constructs infiltrated into Nicotiana benthamiana, in which the red stains are the chloroplast, and the yellow fluorescence is construct (a) BBa_K1618029, (b) BBa_K1618031, (c) BBa_K1618032, and (d) BBa_K1618030

The results above suggest that the chloroplast transit peptide is functional in regards to the localisation of parts to the chloroplast.