PEG-mediated, Stable, Nuclear and Chloroplast Transformation of Cyanidioschizon merolae

Abstract

The ability to achieve nuclear or chloroplast transformation in plants has been a long standing goal, especially in microalgae research. Over past years there has been only little success, but transient and stable nuclear transformation has been achieved in multiple species. Our newly developed method allows for relatively simple transformation of Cyanidioschizon merolae in both nuclear and chloroplast genome by means of homologous recombination between the genome and a transformation vector. The use of chloramphenicol resistance gene as the selectable marker allows for plate-based efficient selection of mutant colonies. Overall, the method allows the generation of mutant strains within 6 months.