BMC Biotechnology BioMed Central Research article Open Access Use of endogenous signal sequences for transient production and efficient secretion by moss (Physcomitrella patens) cells Andreas Schaaf†3, Stefanie Tintelnot†1, Armin Baur1,2, Ralf Reski1, Gilbert Gorr2 and Eva L Decker*1 Address: 1Department of Plant Biotechnology, Faculty of Biology, University of Freiburg, Schaenzlestr. 1, 79104 Freiburg, Germany, 2greenovation Biotech GmbH, Boetzinger Str. 29b, 79111 Freiburg, Germany and 3Department of Plant Biochemistry and Biotechnology, University of Münster, Hindenburgplatz 55, 48143 Münster, Germany Email: Andreas Schaaf -
[email protected]; Stefanie Tintelnot -
[email protected]; Armin Baur -
[email protected]; Ralf Reski -
[email protected]; Gilbert Gorr -
[email protected]; Eva L Decker* -
[email protected] * Corresponding author †Equal contributors Published: 07 November 2005 Received: 20 May 2005 Accepted: 07 November 2005 BMC Biotechnology 2005, 5:30 doi:10.1186/1472-6750-5-30 This article is available from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6750/5/30 © 2005 Schaaf et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Abstract Background: Efficient targeting to appropriate cell organelles is one of the bottlenecks for the production of recombinant proteins in plant systems. A common practice is to use the native secretory signal peptide of the heterologous protein to be produced. Though general features of secretion signals are conserved between plants and animals, the broad sequence variability among signal peptides suggests differing efficiency of signal peptide recognition.