Chemical Control of Transgene Expression in Transgenic Plants: Basic Research and Biotechnological Applications

Abstract

Investigations of plant gene functions through reverse genetics often entail the use of a constitutive promoter to manipulate the expression level of a target gene. Any phenotypic changes in transgenic plants can then be correlated with alterations in target gene expression levels. Whereas this approach may work for most genes, for a number of genes that play an essential role in plant growth and development, constitutive overexpression of their cDNAs or constitutive silencing of their expression often lead to lethality thus providing little information on the gene function. To circumvent this lethality problem, inducible systems for chemical control of gene expression were developed so that transgene expression can be turned on or off at will by applying the appropriate chemical inducer at the desired time.