MOLECULAR CLONING OF BROWN-MIDRIB2 (bm2) GENE
AssigneeIowa State University Research Foundation, Inc.
InventorsPatrick S. Schnable, Ho Man Tang, Sanzhen Liu, Wei Wu
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Abstract
The present invention relates to methods for altering the concentration or composition of lignin in a plant; a method of making a mutant plant having an altered level of MTHFR protein compared to that of a nonmutant plant; plants, mutant plants, and mutant plant seeds produced by these methods; a method of identifying a candidate plant suitable for breeding that displays an altered lignin concentration or composition phenotype; a transgenic plant having an altered level of MTHFR protein capable of determining the lignin concentration or composition in a plant compared to that of a nontransgenic plant; and seed produced from a transgenic plant.
Claims20
A method for altering the concentration or composition of lignin in a plant, said method comprising:
- providing a transgenic plant or plant seed transformed with a nucleic acid construct effective in altering expression of an MTHFR protein capable of determining the concentration or composition of lignin in a plant;
- and
- growing the transgenic plant or the plant grown from the transgenic plant seed under conditions effective to alter the concentration or composition of lignin in the transgenic plant or the plant grown from the transgenic plant seed.
A method of making a mutant plant having an altered level of MTHFR protein compared to that of a nonmutant plant, wherein the mutant plant displays an altered lignin concentration or composition phenotype relative to a nonmutant plant, said method comprising:
- providing at least one cell of a nonmutant plant containing a gene encoding a functional MTHFR protein;
- treating said at least one cell of a nonmutant plant under conditions effective to inactivate or overactivate said gene, thereby yielding at least one mutant plant cell containing an inactive or overactive MTHFR gene;
- and
- propagating said at least one mutant plant cell into a mutant plant, wherein said mutant plant has an altered level of MTHFR protein compared to that of the nonmutant plant and displays an altered lignin concentration or composition phenotype relative to a nonmutant plant.
A method for altering lignin concentration or composition in a plant, said method comprising:
- transforming a plant cell with a nucleic acid molecule encoding an MTHFR protein capable of determining lignin concentration or composition in a plant operably associated with a promoter to obtain a transformed plant cell;
- regenerating a plant from the transformed plant cell;
- and
- inducing the promoter under conditions effective to alter lignin concentration or composition in the plant.
A method of identifying a candidate plant suitable for breeding that displays an altered lignin concentration or composition phenotype, said method comprising:
- analyzing the candidate plant for the presence, in its genome, of an inactive or overactive bm2 gene.
A transgenic plant having an altered level of MTHFR protein capable of determining the lignin concentration or composition in a plant, compared to that of a nontransgenic plant, wherein the transgenic plant displays an altered lignin concentration or composition phenotype, relative to a nontransgenic plant.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.