An objective of the present invention is to provide promoters having seed-specific promoter activity, and methods of expressing foreign proteins in seeds. The present inventors isolated the promoters of a number of genes that are expressed in rice seeds, constructed binary vectors in which each promoter is inserted upstream of the GUS reporter gene, and transformed rice using the
Agrobacterium
method. The inventors then used GUS expression level as an index to examine the site of expression, the expression pattern during seed maturation, and the level of expression in seeds for each promoter. They thus discovered promoters with activity specific to a particular site in seeds, and with higher activity than constitutive promoters and known seed-specific promoters.
本发明的目的是提供具有种子特异性启动子活性的启动子和在种子中表达外源蛋白的方法。本发明者分离了在
水稻种子中表达的多个
基因的启动子,构建了二元载体,在每个启动子上游插入GUS报告
基因,并使用农杆菌法转化
水稻。然后,发明者使用GUS表达
水平作为指标,检查每个启动子的表达位置、种子成熟期的表达模式以及种子中的表达
水平。他们因此发现了具有特定于种子特定部位的活性的启动子,并且其活性高于常规启动子和已知的种子特异性启动子。