Abstract
The small serine resolvase ParA from bacterial plasmids RK2 and RP4 catalyzes the recombination of two identical 133 bp recombination sites known as MRS. Previously, we reported that ParA is active in the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe. In this work, the parA recombinase gene was placed under the control of the Arabidopsis OXS3 promoter and introduced into Arabidopsis lines harboring a chromosomally integrated MRS-flanked target. The ParA recombinase excised the MRS-flanked DNA and the excision event was detected in subsequent generations in the absence of ParA, indicating germinal transmission of the excision event. The precise site-specific deletion by the ParA recombination system in planta demonstrates that the ParA recombinase can be used to remove transgenic DNA, such as selectable markers or other introduced transgenes that are no longer desired in the final product.
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Acknowledgements
We thank A. Blechl, M. Whalen, J. Fletcher and W. Belknap for reading the manuscript, and Van Le, Will Kim, Ron Chan and Wylla Nunes for technical assistance. References to a company and/or product by the USDA are only for purposes of information and do not imply approval or recommendation of the product to the exclusion of others that may also be suitable. Funded by USDA-ARS projects 5325-21000-002-00D and 5335-21000-031-00 D.
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An erratum to this article is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11248-010-9462-x.
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Thomson, J.G., Yau, YY., Blanvillain, R. et al. ParA resolvase catalyzes site-specific excision of DNA from the Arabidopsis genome. Transgenic Res 18, 237–248 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11248-008-9213-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11248-008-9213-4