I. Diaz et al., GENE SPECIFICITY IS MAINTAINED IN TRANSIENT EXPRESSION ASSAYS WITH PROTOPLASTS DERIVED FROM DIFFERENT TISSUES OF BARLEY, Euphytica, 85(1-3), 1995, pp. 203-207
In some cereal species that are still recalcitrant to stable transform
ation and regeneration, transient expression in isolated protoplasts i
s a useful tool for the study of gene expression and regulation. We ha
ve successfully applied these techniques to barley protoplasts derived
from developing endosperm, aleurone, leaves and roots in order to cha
racterize functionally cis-acting motives in two gene promoters, corre
sponding to trypsin inhibitorBTI-CMe and to sucrose synthase Ss1. Gene
specificity is maintained in transient expression assays with protopl
asts isolated from these different barley tissues and the pattern of e
xpression parallels the mRNA levels observed for the corresponding gen
es in the same tissues.