Scientists Identify and Characterize Cotton Boll Wall-Specific Promoters for Future GM Cotton Varieties

Commercially available biotech cotton varieties actively express anti-pest proteins to protect the plant from insect attack. Restricting the expression of transgenes to the tissues in which their products are necessary may enhance the quality of the crop and reduce possible environmental impacts. Thus, Damien Lightfoot of The University of Adelaide in Australia together with other scientists identified the native gene promoters that would limit transgene expression to the boll wall of the cotton plant.

Six predominant mRNAs that were concentrated in the boll wall were identified, and the gene promoters of two of these mRNAs were identified, isolated, and characterized.

The promoters of genes GhPRP3 and GhCHS1 were found to cause boll wall-preferential expression of a reported gene in a temporary transformation system. Further analyses of these promoters led to the identification of previously reported cis-acting regulatory elements (CAREs) as well as three new shared CAREs. These findings are vital in the development of next generation transgenic plants.

Read the abstract at http://www.springerlink.com/content/p27553w87276q6v9/.