Advances in Agrobacterium-mediated plant transformation with enphasys on soybean

Abstract

Soybean is one of humanity's major sources of plant protein. It is also very important for animal feed and as industrial raw material. Great advances have recently been achieved in its genetic transformation. This review provides a comprehensive discussion of important factors affecting Agrobacterium-mediated soybean transformation including target tissues, plant tissue health, wounding methods, regeneration systems, selectable markers and reporter genes.

Optimization of soybean (Glycine max (L.) Merrill) in planta ovary transformation using a linear minimal gus gene cassette

“…Great challenges remain in soybean transformation because of difficulties in tissue culture and plant regeneration, and low transformation efficiency (Bent, 2000;Mello-Farias and Chaves, 2008). The development of an in planta soybean transformation method with high transformation efficiency that avoids tissue culture and regeneration, would be of great interest.…”

Transgenic fertile soybean plants derived from somatic embryos transformed via the combined DNA-free particle bombardment and Agrobacterium system

“…Agrobacterium-mediated transformation typically gives rise to lower transgene copy number, when compared to direct transformation methods (Kohli et al 2003;Mello-Farias and Chaves 2008). However, it is not uncommon to find multiple transgene copies in the plant genome after Agrobacterium-mediated transformation (Paz et al 2004;Hong et al 2007;Liu et al 2008;Wang and Xu 2008).…”

“…After this first work, advances in transformation techniques were achieved and transgenic fertile soybeans were obtained from different explants, such as cotyledonary nodes (Paz et al 2004;Liu et al 2008), immature zygotic cotyledons (Yan et al 2000;Ko et al 2003Ko et al , 2004, hypocotyls (Aragão et al 2000;Wang and Xu 2008), half-seed (Paz et al 2006) and organogenic callus (Hong et al 2007). Unfortunately, only a few viable transgenic lines could be generated, showing that more appropriate and effective methods need to be developed to improve the soybean transformation efficiency (Mello-Farias and Chaves 2008).…”

“…On the other hand, Agrobacterium-mediated transformation of proliferating somatic embryogenic cultures has proven to be challenging (Mello-Farias and Chaves 2008), and few works employing these target tissues have been published. The current literature reports the successful use of immature zygotic cotyledons and primary embryogenic tissue as targets for Agrobacterium-mediated transformation (Parrott et al 1989;Yan et al 2000;Ko et al 2003Ko et al , 2004.…”

Heterologous expression of bacteriocin E-760 in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii and functional analysis

“…Although, the transformation methods of C. reinhardtii directed to the nucleus or plastids are relatively simple, the majority of the high-value recombinant proteins have been produced in the chloroplast of the microalgae through direct transformation by microprojectile bombardment, a method that requires the use of specialized equipment; whereas, the transformation directed to the nucleus mediated by Agrobacterium tumefaciens is a biological method that does not generate damage to the host cell, can transfer large fragments (150 kb) to the nuclear genome, integrates a low number of copies of the interest gene and does not require specialized equipment, making it a more cost-effective and accessible method (Mello-Farias and Chaves, 2008).…”