NEW PLANT PROMOTER AND ENHANCER TESTING VECTORS

We describe here a set of binary vectors suitable for Agrobacterium-me diated gene transfer and specially designed for studying plant promote rs. These vectors are based on the use of the gus reporter gene, conta in multiple unique restriction sites upstream of the gus gene, and min imal promoters for testing the effect of enhancers or activator elemen ts. In addition, an intron-containing gus (uidA) gene was introduced i nto one of these vectors in order to examine reporter gene activity in tissues where Agrobacterium contamination may be a problem or in tran sient expression assays.