Philip Morris Products S.a.

Verena Liedschulte

Lucien Bovet

Simon Goepfert

Nicolas Sierro

There is described herein a mutant plant or part thereof having at least partially reduced expression or activity of at least two heavy metal ATPases (HMAs), said two HMAs comprising, consisting or consisting essentially of: (i) polypeptides having at least 65% sequence identity to SEQ ID NO:1 and SEQ ID NO:2; (ii) polynucleotides encoding the polypeptides set forth in (i); or (iii) polynucleotides having at least 65% sequence identity to SEQ ID NO:3 and SEQ ID NO:4 encoding HMAs; wherein the expression or activity of one of the HMAs set forth in (i) or (ii) or (iii) is partially reduced or lost and the expression or activity of one of the HMAs set forth in (i) or (ii) or (iii) is lost as compared to a control plant; and wherein the mutant plant or part thereof exhibits at least a 27% reduction, as compared to the control plant, in the accumulation of cadmium in leaf when the mutant plant is grown in the field in the presence of naturally or non-naturally occurring cadmium.

Reducing cadmium accumulation in field grown tobacco plants

The present invention relates to a mutant, non-naturally occurring or transgenic tobacco plant cell comprising: (i) a polynucleotide comprising, consisting or consisting essentially of a sequence encoding a functional nicotine N-demethylase and having at least 95% sequence identity to SEQ ID NO:2; (ii) a polypeptide encoded by the polynucleotide set forth in (i); (iii) a polypeptide comprising, consisting or consisting essentially of a sequence encoding a nicotine N-demethylase and having at least 95% sequence identity to SEQ ID NO:3; or (iv) a construct, vector or expression vector comprising the isolated polynucleotide set forth in (i), and wherein the expression or activity of said nicotine demethylase is reduced as compared to a control tobacco plant cell in which the expression or activity of said nicotine demethylase has not been reduced.

Growing community of inventors

Valangin, Switzerland

Verena Liedschulte