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During senescence and times of stress, plants can mobilize needed nitrogen from chloroplasts in leaves to other organs. Much of the total leaf nitrogen is allocated to the most abundant plant protein, ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/ oxygenase (Rubisco). Previously by immunoelectron microscopy (IEM), we demonstrated that Rubisco is released from the chloroplast into Rubisco-containing bodies (RCBs) in naturally senescent leaves (Chiba et al. 2003). In this study, we visualized RCBs in living cells of transgenic Arabidopsis plants containing stroma-targeted green fluorescent protein (GFP). When leaves of transgenic Arabidopsis plants were incubated under starvation conditions with a vacuolar-ATPase inhibitor, spherical bodies exhibiting GFP fluorescence without chlorophyll fluorescence were observed. Spherical bodies were not observed when leaves were provided with a sugar and nutrient solution. IEM of concanamycin-A-treated leaves with anti-Rubisco antibodies confirmed the existence of RCBs in the vacuolar compartment. These results suggest the hypothesis that stromal proteins can be mobilized to the vacuole via RCBs by possibly autophagy for the degradation.

The strengths of gene promoters functional in chloroplasts have been evaluated for transient expression by particle bombardment to facilitate engineering of the chloroplast genome of Arabidopsis thaliana. The T7 RNA polymerase-recognized promoter was the most active in transgenic A. thaliana with T7 RNA polymcrase destined for chloroplasts. As a vital reporter of gene expression, an improved gene for green fluorescent protein (GFP) was chemically synthesized and resulted in approx. 100 times higher fluorescence intensity in A. thaliana. To overcome the limitations of experimentally designing of engineered proteins, we employed in vitro random mutagenesis of genes and subsequent selection of their transformants under certain conditions. The strategy was successfully applied to the photosystem II reaction center D1 protein to confer phototolerance on it.