Alteration of potato plastids as platforms for biotechnology and synthetic biology

Plastids represent a unique opportunity for plant biotechnology and synthetic biology. Their fundamental uses for photosynthesis, starch storage, and other processes can be exploited to benefit food production and other industries. In this work, we attempt to modulate these plastids in order to produce potato plants with beneficial characteristics for further use in synthetic biology. The first chapter of this dissertation involves genome-editing of the FtsZ1 gene, which is involved in plastid division. Plants were generated with large plastids and starch granules, and similar methods could be used to produce these plants without foreign DNA integration. The second chapter involves generating similarly large plastid plants that were used for chloroplast transformation. These plants could be potentially useful for the installation of large constructs via microinjection. The final chapter involves the generation of an alternative chloroplast transformation method, where plasmids are maintained within the organelle without integration to the plastome. Next generations of this method could be used to integrate specified genes, while allowing others to be only transiently expressed.