Vr. Bommineni et al., TRANSFORMATION OF WHITE SPRUCE (PICEA-GLAUCA) SOMATIC EMBRYOS BY MICROPROJECTILE BOMBARDMENT, Plant cell reports, 13(1), 1993, pp. 17-23
Cotyledonary somatic embryos of white spruce [Picea glauca (Moench) Vo
ss] were subjected to microprojectile bombardment with a gene construc
t containing a gus=nptII fusion gene. Somatic embryos were used to re-
induce the embryogenic tissue after bombardments. Histochemical assay
using X-gluc as a substrate showed that all the embryos (100%) were GU
S positive 48 h after bombardment. However, only thirteen out of 605 e
mbryos (2.2%) remained GUS positive after two months in culture. Three
of those thirteen (23%) embryo-derived tissues consistently showed GU
S activity for eight months in culture. These putatively transformed e
mbryogenic tissues were subjected to Southern blot analysis and the re
sults suggested integration of the gus=nptII gene expression cassette
in the white spruce genome.