Japan Tobacco Inc.

Hideaki Saito

Yoshimitsu Takakura

Tsuyoshi Inoue

Toru Ito

Yukoh Hiei

Yuji Ishida

Toshihiko Komari

Disclosed is a method of transforming monocotyledons which necessitates only a short period from the transformation to the regeneration of a whole plant as compared with the conventional methods, thus reducing the frequency of occurrence of mutants, and can be generally applied to the plants for which any system of regenerating the whole plants from protoplasts has not been established, and in which the material to be used can be readily prepared without any particular apparatuses. The present invention provides a method for transforming monocotyledons comprising transforming scutellum of an immature embryo of a monocotyledon with a bacterium belonging to genuscontaining a desired gene, which immature embryo has not been subjected to a dedifferentiation treatment, to obtain a transformant.

Method of transforming monocotyledons using scutella of immature embryos

An object of the present invention is to provide a novel DNA sequence having a flower organ-specific promoter activity which makes it possible to express a foreign gene specifically in pistil or lodicule, this enabling genetic manipulation. The present invention provides a DNA fragment comprising the sequence of positions 1 to 5369 in the nucleotide sequence represented by SEQ ID NO:3 in Sequence Listing, the sequence of positions 3335 to 5108 therein, a part of these sequences or a sequence derived from these sequences by deletion, substitution, insertion or addition of one or more nucleotides and having a promoter activity; and a flower organ-specific promoter sequence which can be identified from among sequences obtained by screening a genomic library of rice or other plants by using as a probe the nucleotide sequence as described above or a part thereof.

DNA fragment directing gene expression predominant in flower organ

The flower organ-specific promoter is contained in the sequence consisting of nucleotides of positions from 1 to 1234 in the nucleotide sequence represented by SEQ ID NO:3. The promoter includes sequences derived from the above sequence by deletion, substitution, insertion or addition of one or more nucleotides and having a flower organ-specific promoter activity and also those obtainable by using the nucleotide sequence represented by SEQ ID NO:1 as a probe and having a flower organ-specific promoter activity.

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Shizuoka-ken, Japan

Hideaki Saito