Phenotypic instability of transgenic tobacco plants and their progenies expressing Arabidopsis thaliana small GTP-binding protein genes.
Chimeric genes consisting of the cauliflower mosaic virus 35S promoter, a cDNA encoding a small GTP-binding protein from Arabidopsis thaliana (ara-2 or ara-4) and the terminator of the nopaline synthase gene were cloned into a binary vector. Tobacco leaf tissues were transformed with this plasmid via Agrobacterium-mediated transformation. Transgenic plants possessing either ara-2 or ara-4 occasionally showed morphological abnormalities in leaves and other organs. However, such alterations were not always associated with co-transferred characters, such as kanamycin tolerance, and they arose in no more than 10% of the transgenic plants. Such phenomena were also observed in the progenies of the primary transgenic plants. Despite such unusual inheritance of the phenotypic abnormalities, GTP-binding activity of the inserted ara gene products was detected in all plants tested.
Aspuria
E T
ET
Institute of Molecular and Cellular Biosciences, University of Tokyo, Japan.
Anai
T
T
Fujii
N
N
Ueda
T
T
Miyoshi
M
M
Matsui
M
M
Uchimiya
H
H
D017360:Arabidopsis / Q000235:genetics; D019204:GTP-Binding Proteins / Q000235:genetics*; D018506:Gene Expression Regulation, Plant / Q000235:genetics; D017343:Genes, Plant; D010641:Phenotype; D010940:Plant Proteins / Q000235:genetics; D030821:Plants, Genetically Modified / Q000235:genetics*; D010947:Plants, Toxic; D014026:Nicotiana / Q000235:genetics*
D010940:Plant Proteins; D019204:GTP-Binding Proteins