A chimaeric antibiotic resistance gene as a selectable marker for plant cell transformation

Abstract

The T-DNA region of Agrobacterium tumefaciens tumour-inducing plasmids of the nopaline type1 contains a gene coding for the enzyme nopaline synthase. This gene is expressed constitutively in host plant cells to which it is transferred during tumour induction2. We have exploited the regulatory elements of this gene to construct a chimaeric gene that confers antibiotic resistance on transformed plant cells. The chimaeric gene encodes the expected chimaeric transcripts in plant cells, and confers on transformed cells the ability to grow in the presence of normally lethal levels of the antibiotic G418 (ref. 3). Experiments using in vitro transformation techniques on single plant cells indicate that this antibiotic resistance can be used as a selectable marker, and can therefore be used in selecting cells transformed by T-DNA vectors that have had the genes for hormone autotrophy deleted4. Plant cells transformed by such ‘disarmed’ T-DNA vectors can be regenerated into entire plants, whose sexual progeny contain unaltered copies of the inciting T-DNA5. The availability of this dominant selectable marker should allow a wider range of experiments to be under taken using different host plants.