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ARS Home » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #238419
Title: Conventional breeding used to improve Bt cotton

Author
item Adamczyk, John
item Perera, Omaththage
item Meredith Jr, William

Submitted to: Information Systems for Biotechnology News Report
Publication Type: Review Article
Publication Acceptance Date: 8/28/2009
Publication Date: 10/10/2009
Citation: Adamczyk Jr, J.J., Perera, O.P., Meredith Jr, W.R. 2009. Conventional breeding used to improve Bt cotton. Information Systems for Biotechnology News Report.

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: Commercial cultivars of Bollgard® cotton, Gossypium hirsutum L., differ in the amount of expressed Cry1Ac protein. However, the plant-mechanism for which this occurs is still unknown. A method was developed using quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) to determine if differences in the overall level of Cry1Ac among Bollgard® lines could be correlated to the mRNA transcripts. Our data shows that the cry1Ac mRNA transcript differs among Bollgard® lines and are correlated with corresponding Cry1Ac protein levels. In addition, qPCR based methods can efficiently be employed to quantify Cry1Ac protein expression levels in transgenic cotton cultivars. We postulate that qPCR based methods could be successfully employed for quantifying expression levels of transgenes in plants carrying different Bt proteins.