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ARS Home » Midwest Area » St. Paul, Minnesota » Cereal Disease Lab » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #103582
Title: RAPID EMBRYOGENESIS AND PLANT REGENERATION OF TARGET TISSUE DERIVED FROM JUVENILE SHOOTS FOR TRANSFORMATION OF OAT BY MICROPROJECTILE BOMBARDMENT

Author
item MATSUDA, YOSHINORI - KINKI UNIVERSITY
item Bushnell, William
item SOMERS, DAVID - UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA
item Rines, Howard

Submitted to: Plant Biotechnology Journal
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 5/18/1998
Publication Date: N/A
Citation: N/A

Interpretive Summary: Modern biotechnology allows individual genes to be introduced into crop plants to improve disease and stress resistance, improve yield and quality of crops, and to introduce other desirable plant characteristics. However, genes are not easy to introduce into the small grains, including barley, oats, and wheat. Genes are introduced into these crop plants by bombardment of tissue cultures with microparticles carrying DNA of the genes to be introduced. Growth of tissues for bombardment and selective propagation of transformed plants after bombardment require 6-12 months. Here, we report an improvement in the way tissue cultures are obtained for particle bombardment. Using oats, we obtained tissue cultures by culturing basal shoot tissues from 5-day-old seedlings. These rapidly produced the desired embryogenic type of tissue suitable for bombardment. This has the potential to shorten transformation procedures by several weeks. The results will be used by plant scientists around the world who work on methods for putting genes into small grains.

Technical Abstract: Tissue cultures suitable for microprojectile bombardment were obtained from juvenile shoots of oat. Seeds were grown on modified MS medium for five days, then basal sections of shoots were excised and further cultured. Embryogenic calli developed within two weeks and these, in turn, produced shoots after 4 weeks' incubation. Preliminary results with the B-glucuronidase (gus) gene showed transient expression of gus, three days after embryogenic callus was bombarded. The method offers a rapid and simple way to produce embryogenic callus for oat transformation using particle bombardment.