Plant Transformation via Protoplast Electroporation

In electroporation, cells are permeabihzed by the application of very short, high-voltage electric pulses. Molecules ranging in size from small organic metabolites and reporter dyes to large macromolecules—including antibodies and plasmids—can be introduced into cells by electroporation. Electroporation is effective on virtually any type of cell, and is now the method of choice for the genetic transformation of bacteria and certain animal cell lines. The primary application of electroporation to plants has been for DNA uptake for studies of transient gene expression and for stable transformation. However, electroporation has also been used to introduce RNAs (1 ,2 ), antibodies (3 ), and small molecules (4 ) into plant cells and isolated organelles (5 ).