title: A synthetic tuber-specific and cold-induced promoter is applicable in controlling potato cold-induced sweetening.
abstract: Cold-induced sweetening (CIS) in potato seriously hinders the potato processing industry. It could be of great value for genetic improvement of potato CIS to have a target gene specifically expressed in cold stored tubers. In this study, we used a synthetic promoter, pCL, in potato transformation to drive an antisense expression of StvacINV1, the acid vacuolar invertase gene from Solanum tuberosum. The measurements of expression and enzyme activity of target gene showed that pCL promoter could efficiently govern target gene to express specifically and remarkably regulate the activity of acid vacuolar invertase in potato tubers at low temperature, furthermore, it had almost no effect in other tissues or the tubers under room temperature. The transgenic tubers showed decrease in reducing sugar content during storage at low temperature and acceptable chip color without significant changes observed in plant morphology and tuberization between the nontransgenic and transgenic lines. This tuber-specific and cold-induced feature could maximally reduce the background expression of the target gene which might bring about potential negative or detrimental effects to plant development. The synthetic promoter confirmed here would be optimal for gene function research in potato tubers in response to low temperature.
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Horticulture Plant Biology, Huazhong Agricultural University, National Center for Vegetable Improvement (Central China), Ministry of Education, Wuhan 430070, People's Republic of China. Electronic address: pseudocercus@webmail.hzau.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Meng
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Horticulture Plant Biology, Huazhong Agricultural University, National Center for Vegetable Improvement (Central China), Ministry of Education, Wuhan 430070, People's Republic of China. Electronic address: songbotao@mail.hzau.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Botao
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Song
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Horticulture Plant Biology, Huazhong Agricultural University, National Center for Vegetable Improvement (Central China), Ministry of Education, Wuhan 430070, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Qiong
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Horticulture Plant Biology, Huazhong Agricultural University, National Center for Vegetable Improvement (Central China), Ministry of Education, Wuhan 430070, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Xun
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Horticulture Plant Biology, Huazhong Agricultural University, National Center for Vegetable Improvement (Central China), Ministry of Education, Wuhan 430070, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Yuan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Lin
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Horticulture Plant Biology, Huazhong Agricultural University, National Center for Vegetable Improvement (Central China), Ministry of Education, Wuhan 430070, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Yongbin
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Ou
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Horticulture Plant Biology, Huazhong Agricultural University, National Center for Vegetable Improvement (Central China), Ministry of Education, Wuhan 430070, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Huiling
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Horticulture Plant Biology, Huazhong Agricultural University, National Center for Vegetable Improvement (Central China), Ministry of Education, Wuhan 430070, People's Republic of China. Electronic address: liujun@mail.hzau.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Jun
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Liu
mesh_terms: D003080:Cold Temperature; D018506:Gene Expression Regulation, Plant; D030821:Plants, Genetically Modified / Q000378:metabolism; D011401:Promoter Regions, Genetic / Q000235:genetics*; D011198:Solanum tuberosum / Q000235:genetics*
keywords: Cold-induce; Potato; Synthetic promoter; Tuber-specificity