Suntory Limited

International Flower Developments Proprietary Limited

Suntory Flowers Limited

Keiko Sakakibara

Takaaki Kusumi

Yoshikazu Tanaka

Yuko Fukui

Masako Mizutani

Toru Nakayama

Toshihiko Ashikari

Eiichiro Ono

Masahiro Nakao

Tokuzo Nishino

Hiroto Kondo

Yasuji Oshima

Hiroyuki Araki

Hiroyuki Fujiwara

Takafumi Yoshikawa

The present invention provides a protein having aurone synthase activity involved in the color of flowers such as snapdragons, a gene that encodes it, cDNA in particular, and its applications. This gene can give yellow color to the flowers of plants by introducing into plants deficient in chalcone isomerase and so forth and expressing.

Gene encoding a protein having aurone synthesis activity

A protein which has an amino acid sequence shown by SEQ ID NO: 2, 4, 6, 23, 25, 27 or 29, or any of these amino acid sequences modified, and which has activity for transferring an aliphatic acyl group to a glycosyl group at the 5-position of flavonoids, and a gene encoding the same.

Aliphatic acyl transferase genes

A nucleic acid encoding a protein which has an amino acid sequence according to SEQ ID NO: 2, 12, or 14, or the amino acid sequence modified by addition or deletion of one or more amino acids and/or substitution by other amino acids, and which has activity to transfer a glycosyl group to the 3'-position of anthocyanins.

Glycosyltransferase genes

The invention relates to isolated polynucleotides encoding a protein having aromatic acyltransferase activity, vectors comprising aromatic acyltransferase polynucleotides, and methods of transforming plants with anthocyanin acyltransferase polynucleotides to alter flower colors. The invention also relates to transformed host cells, plants, and flower cuts expressing proteins having anthocyanin acyltransferase activity.

Gene encoding a protein having acyl group transfer activity

Gene encoding protein having aurone synthesizing activity

There is provided a gene encoding a protein derived from, for example, snapdragons and petunias, said protein having an amino acid sequence as set forth in SEQ ID NO: 2, 8, and 10, and having an activity of transferring a glycosyl group to aurones, and a method of producing said protein using said gene. By introducing this gene into plants that do not have said gene, a yellow pigment aurone can be stabilized and plants having yellow flowers can be obtained.

Genes encoding protein having activity of transferring sugar onto aurone

A DNA construct wherein a DNA fragment which is recombinable in yeast chromosomal DNA is directly or indirectly linked at both ends of a DNA fragment which comprises a pair of R sensitive sequences oriented in the same direction and flaking both an R gene placed under the control of an inducible promoter and an expressible selective marker gene, which is a DNA construct designed with the R sensitive sequences non-symmetrically shortened, so that no functionable R sensitive sequence remains after the R sensitive sequence recombination has occurred by expression of the R gene and the selective marker has been removed. Since no functionable R sensitive sequence remains after removal of the selective marker, recombination does not occur again, and thus the same selective marker may be used for multiple insertions of foreign genes.

Method for constructing transformant not having selective marker gene

Growing community of inventors

Muko, Japan

Keiko Sakakibara