Marker gene removal: a practical necessity?
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to A Goldsbrough.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
A vector has been designed that contains a truncated CaMV (cauliflower mosaic virus) 35S promoter fused to a receptor gene encoding beta-glucuronidase (GUS), placed adjacent to the left border sequence of an Agrobacterium vector. In potato plants transformed with this vector, different patterns of transcription were detected at high frequency using in situ assays for GUS activity. Previous studies in Drosophila using analogous vectors have shown that the new patterns of transcription in many cases reflect the patterns of expression of genes adjacent to the site of vector insertion. If this is also the case in plants, the vector described here will be useful in identifying the activity of genes in different cell types and will assist in determining their function.
Patatin is an abundant glycoprotein in the tubers of potato plants that has a lipid acyl hydrolase activity. Fusions of the promoter of patatin genes that are highly expressed in tubers with the reporter gene encoding beta-glucuronidase (GUS) have shown that patatin transcription has a high degree of tuber specificity. Patatin transcription was also inducible in other organs of transgenic potato by growth on high concentrations of sucrose. Experiments were conducted to define regions of the patatin promoter that confered tuber specific expression and sucrose inducibility. Sequences between -40 and -400 bp and between -400 and -957 bp of the transcriptional start site were able to confer tuber-specific expression on a heterologous truncated promoter. The cell specificity of GUS transcription in the transformants indicated that organ specificity was possibly determined by source-sink relationships of sucrose, or a metabolite of sucrose, in the whole plant.
We have isolated recombinant lambda clones containing intact major tuber protein (patatin) genes and flanking sequences from the commercial tetraploid variety Maris Piper. The gene is composed of seven exons and six introns, spread over 4 kb of DNA. Nuclease mapping defined the 5' end of the mRNA approximately 45 bp upstream of the initiation codon. The 5' end of the gene is preceeded by a canonical TATA box sequence. The three known patatin genes encode proteins of nearly identical Mr but very different isoelectric points. The sequence of the gene does not indicate a role for patatin as one of the globulin class of plant storage proteins.