Vacuolar compartmentalization: a second-generation approach to engineering plants for phytoremediation

Engineering plants with greater metal tolerance and accumulation properties is the key to developing phytoremediators. A recent study by Won-Yong Song et al. has shown that overexpressing the yeast vacuolar transporter YCF1 increases Pb and Cd tolerance and consequently increases the accumulation of these metals in shoots of transgenic Arabidopsis plants even though expression levels of YCF1 were relatively low. This technology can be used to engineer advanced phytoremediators, increasing their ability to pump heavy metals into a safe compartment while requiring only a small amount of transporters rather than a large amount of chelating peptide material.