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Approaches to improve heterogeneous gene expression in transgenic plants

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2007

Yin Tao
Affiliation:
Department of Horticulture, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310029, China
Zhang Shang-long*
Affiliation:
Department of Horticulture, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310029, China
Liu Jing-mei
Affiliation:
Department of Biology, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
Chen De-ming
Affiliation:
Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins, USA
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]

Abstract

With the development of plant genetic engineering, many transformation methods can be used to transfer heterogeneous genes into plants to develop genetic crops. However, a lot of research results have shown that transgene expression remains largely unpredictable and there is great variation of expression level in different transgenic plant lines. Plant genetic engineering research is reviewed in the present paper. We analysed the reasons why low efficiency of heterogeneous gene expression has happened in transgenic plants in terms of DNA modification, localization of proteins and methods of transformation used. Some strategies for improving heterogeneous gene expression in transgenic plants are also discussed.

Type
Review Article
Copyright
Copyright © China Agricultural University and Cambridge University Press 2006

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