Abstract：Agrobacterium tumefaciens VirD2 protein performs functions in binding a single-stranded T-DNA (ssT-DNA) covalently, transferring it into plant nuclear, and integrating it efficiently into the nuclear genome. If it can be modified to target plastid, the VirD2 can pilot foreign genes there, and a new method of plastid transformation can be established. In this study, the localization signals of VirD2 were modified, which included the coding sequence of the nuclear localization signal (NLS) at its N terminal was point-mutated and its C terminal containing a bipartite-type NLS was truncated using an overlapping PCR method. This mutated VirD2 (mVirD2) was then fused with an eGFP (enhanced green fluorescent protein) reporter gene at the 3' end, and with or without the coding sequence of plastid-targeting peptide from Arabidopsis thaliana cold-regulated gene (AtCOR15A) at the 5' end, to construct chimeric genes pt-mVirD2-eGFP and mVirD2-eGFP, respectively. The chimeric genes were controlled by CaMV 35S promoter and were integrated into tobacco (Nicotina tabacum) nuclear genome via Agrobacterium-mediated transformation. The fluorescence was only concentrated in chloroplasts for the transformants expressing pt-mVirD2-eGFP while dispersed among the cytoplasm for those with mVirD2-eGFP, and was not observed in the nuclear for both of them. The results showed that the expressing fused protein pt-mVirD2-eGFP targeted plastid specifically without nuclear localization, which bring forth an idea to explore efficient plastid transformation mediated by protein pt-mVirD2 as a guider of foreign DNA.
