Patent ID: 7964771

Claim:
A method of obtaining a transplastomic plant free of a selectable marker gene, said method comprising the following steps: a) transforming at least one plant cell with a vector suitable for the transformation of plastids, said vector comprising, in the direction of transcription, a sequence (i) corresponding to the 5′ portion of a chimeric gene of interest, a chimeric gene (ii) comprising a sequence encoding a selectable marker that confers resistance to a selection agent, a fragment (iii) of at least twenty-five nucleotides that is identical to the 3′ portion of the sequence (i), and a sequence (iv) corresponding to the remaining 3′ portion of the chimeric gene of interest, wherein neither sequence (i) and fragment (iii) nor fragment (iii) and sequence (iv) form a complete chimeric gene of interest; b) culturing the cells comprising the transformed plastids transformed cells from step a) on a first medium comprising the selection agent; and c) culturing the cells on a second medium that does not comprise the selection agent.