title: Maize transformation technology development for commercial event generation.
abstract: Maize is an important food and feed crop in many countries. It is also one of the most important target crops for the application of biotechnology. Currently, there are more biotech traits available on the market in maize than in any other crop. Generation of transgenic events is a crucial step in the development of biotech traits. For commercial applications, a high throughput transformation system producing a large number of high quality events in an elite genetic background is highly desirable. There has been tremendous progress in Agrobacterium-mediated maize transformation since the publication of the Ishida et al. (1996) paper and the technology has been widely adopted for transgenic event production by many labs around the world. We will review general efforts in establishing efficient maize transformation technologies useful for transgenic event production in trait research and development. The review will also discuss transformation systems used for generating commercial maize trait events currently on the market. As the number of traits is increasing steadily and two or more modes of action are used to control key pests, new tools are needed to efficiently transform vectors containing multiple trait genes. We will review general guidelines for assembling binary vectors for commercial transformation. Approaches to increase transformation efficiency and gene expression of large gene stack vectors will be discussed. Finally, recent studies of targeted genome modification and transgene insertion using different site-directed nuclease technologies will be reviewed.
authors.affiliation: Syngenta Biotechnology, Inc. Research Triangle Park, NC, USA.
authors.forename: Qiudeng
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Que
authors.affiliation: Syngenta Biotechnology, Inc. Research Triangle Park, NC, USA.
authors.forename: Sivamani
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Elumalai
authors.affiliation: Syngenta Biotechnology, Inc. Research Triangle Park, NC, USA.
authors.forename: Xianggan
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Syngenta Biotechnology, Inc. Research Triangle Park, NC, USA.
authors.forename: Heng
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Zhong
authors.affiliation: Syngenta Biotechnology, Inc. Research Triangle Park, NC, USA.
authors.forename: Samson
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Nalapalli
authors.affiliation: Syngenta Biotechnology, Inc. Research Triangle Park, NC, USA.
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Schweiner
authors.affiliation: Syngenta Biotechnology, Inc. Research Triangle Park, NC, USA.
authors.forename: Xiaoyin
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Fei
authors.affiliation: Syngenta Biotechnology, Inc. Research Triangle Park, NC, USA.
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Nuccio
authors.affiliation: Syngenta Biotechnology, Inc. Research Triangle Park, NC, USA.
authors.forename: Timothy
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Kelliher
authors.affiliation: Syngenta Biotechnology, Inc. Research Triangle Park, NC, USA.
authors.forename: Weining
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Gu
authors.affiliation: Syngenta Biotechnology, Inc. Research Triangle Park, NC, USA.
authors.forename: Zhongying
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Syngenta Biotechnology, Inc. Research Triangle Park, NC, USA.
authors.forename: Mary-Dell M
authors.initials: MD
authors.lastname: Chilton
keywords: Agrobacterium; T-DNA; genome modification; maize transformation; multi-gene stack; targeted insertion; trait development; transgenic events