Establishing one-step hairy root transformation system in safflower using RUBY reporter.

Area of Science:

• Plant Biotechnology
• Agricultural Science
• Medicinal Chemistry

Background:

• Safflower (Carthamus tinctorius L.) is a vital crop with extensive medicinal, food, and industrial uses.
• Understanding gene function in safflower is crucial for enhancing its medicinal properties, but current genetic transformation methods are inefficient.
• Existing methods like tissue culture and pollen tube pathway transformation have limitations including time consumption, genotype dependency, low repeatability, and environmental sensitivity.

Purpose of the Study:

• To establish a highly efficient one-step hairy root transformation system for safflower.
• To optimize conditions for maximizing transformation efficiency in safflower.
• To provide a reliable method for functional gene studies in safflower and potentially other medicinal plants.

Main Methods:

• Development of a one-step hairy root transformation protocol for safflower.
• Utilization of the RUBY reporter gene for real-time monitoring of transformation efficiency.
• Optimization of explant choice and dark culture duration to enhance transformation rates.

Main Results:

• A robust one-step hairy root transformation system was successfully established in safflower.
• The RUBY reporter facilitated real-time assessment of transformation efficiency.
• Optimized conditions led to a high transformation efficiency of 76.66%.

Conclusions:

• The developed one-step hairy root transformation system offers a significant improvement for safflower genetic studies.
• This method provides a valuable technical approach for advancing genetic transformation in other medicinal plant species.
• Efficient gene function analysis in safflower can now be more readily achieved, accelerating research into its medicinal components.