Riken Corporation

National Institute of Agrobiological Sciences

Takanari Ichikawa

Minami Matsui

Miki Nakazawa

Motoaki Seki

Yukako Hasegawa

Mika Kawashima

Makoto Kobayashi

Hirohiko Hirochika

Kazuo Shinozaki

Masaki Mori

Shinya Takahashi

Takeshi Yoshizumi

Kumiko Suzuki

Miki Fujita

Chika Akagi

Hiroko Hara

Yuko Tsumoto

Haruko Iizumi

Hirofumi Kuroda

Youichi Kondou

Tomoko Kuriyama

Akie Ishikawa

The present invention is directed to identify genes involved in the growth of a plant and provide a transformed plant the growth of which is promoted utilizing the genes.

Transformation of a plant to promote root and/or leaf growth

The present invention provides an early-maturing transgenic plant, which comprises a nucleic acid that encodes a protein having activity of causing early maturation of a plant, so that the gene can be expressed.

Early-maturing transgenic plants

This invention is intended to identify a gene that regulates endoreduplication in a plant and to use such gene for breeding aimed at increasing the crop size. This invention provides a gene encoding an-derived protein having an amino acid sequence as shown in SEQ ID NO: 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, or 12, which has endoreduplication promoting activity, a transgenic plant into which such gene has been introduced, thereby increasing the nuclear DNA content in the cells of such plant, and a method of using such gene to increase the size of the entire plant or a part thereof.

Gene having endoreduplication promoting activity

A gene causative of a phenotype is easily specified and thus gene functions are comprehensively analyzed. A method for analyzing a gene function includes (a) infecting a plant group with a full-length cDNA library containing an expression regulatory sequence to introduce the cDNA into the plants; (b) selecting a plant complying with desired selection requirements from the plants into which the cDNA has been introduced; (c) isolating the cDNA from the selected plant; and (d) re-introducing the thus isolated cDNA into a plant of the same species as the plant into which the cDNA has been introduced, to reconfirm a phenotype according to the selection requirements.

Plant system for comprehensive gene function analysis with the use of full-length cDNA

Growing community of inventors

Kanagawa, Japan

Takanari Ichikawa