Alternative methods of plant transformation--a short review.

Several methods of transformation are currently available for delivering exogenous DNA to plant cells. Agrobacterium-mediated transformation, microprojectile bombardment and direct protoplast transformation are routinely used today. However, each of them has certain disadvantages, which led to research into the development of novel alternative systems such as infiltration, electroporation of cells and tissues, electrophoresis of embryos, microinjection, pollen-tube pathway, silicon carbide- and liposome-mediated transformation. The low efficiency of transformation is considered to be the main reason for the limited popularity of the alternative transformation methods, other than infiltration and silicon carbide-mediated transformation, which seem to be the most promising ones for practice.