CITRIC: cold-inducible translational readthrough in the chloroplast of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii using a novel temperature-sensitive transfer RNA.

CITRIC adds to the suite of genetic engineering tools available for the microalgal chloroplast, allowing a greater degree of control over the timing of heterologous protein expression. It could also be used as a heat-repressible system for studying the function of essential native genes in the chloroplast. The genetic components of CITRIC are entirely plastid-based, so no engineering of the nuclear genome is required.