Abstract
Chimeric genes consisting of the cauliflower mosaic virus 35S promoter, a CDNA encoding a small GTP-binding protein from Arabidopsis thaliana (ara-2 or ara-4) and the terminator of the nopaline synthase gene were cloned into a binary vector. Tobacco leaf tissues were transformed with this plasmid via Agrobacterium-mediated transformation. Transgenic plants possessing either ara-2 or ara-4 occasionally showed morphological abnormalities in leaves and other organs. However, such alterations were not always associated with co-transferred characters, such as kanamycin tolerance, and they arose in no more than 10% of the transgenic plants. Such phenomena were also observed in the progenies of the primary transgenic plants. Despite such unusual inheritance of the phenotypic abnormalities, GTP-binding activity of the inserted ara gene products was detected in all plants tested.
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Aspuria, E.T., Anai, T., Fujii, N. et al. Phenotypic instability of transgenic tobacco plants and their progenies expressing Arabidopsis thafiana small GTP-binding protein genes. Molec. Gen. Genet. 246, 509–513 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00290454
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00290454