[Obtaining transgenic rice plants and their progenies using Agrobacterium tumefaciens]

Rice (Oriza sativa L.) suspension cells of Taipei 309 were co-cultivated with A. tumefaciens stran EHA101 harbouring binary vector pBYT2 for 3 days in the presence of vir inducer, 100 mumol/L acetosyringone (AS). After 2 months of continuous selection, 17 stable hygromycin-resistant, GUS-positive calli were recovered from 364 suspension cell clusters co-cultivated with A. tumefaciens. 10 putative transgenic R0 plants obtained from 8 tansformed calli and their progenies were analyzed for the integration and expression of foreign genes. Southern blot analysis of R0 and R1 generations indicated that foreign genes had been stably integrated in the genome of transgenic rice and sexually transmitted. One of the transgenic lines showed 5 copies of T-DNA integration, while the others had only one copy. Histochemical staining observation and fluorometric assay of GUS activity in transgenic rice cells and plants showed ubiquitin promoter from maize was highly effective in driving the expression of gus reporter gene in transgenic rice cells. GUS protein and its activity were also investigated through ndPAGE-X-Gluc staining assay, and it was found that the GUS protein in transgenic rice cells was smaller in size than the standard GUS protein (Sigma Co. G0786) but as large as that from E.coli HB101 (pBI121). This study suggested that Agrobacterium-mediated transformation of plant is an efficient and reliable method to introduce foreign genes into rice.