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Plant Physiology 135:709-714 (2004) © 2004 American Society of Plant Biologists Fluorescent Screening of Transgenic Arabidopsis Seeds without Germination1The Robert H. Smith Institute of Plant Sciences and Genetics in Agriculture and The Otto Warburg Minerva Center for Agricultural Biotechnology, Faculty of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Quality Sciences, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Rehovot 76100, Israel (S.W., B.-A.B., O.S.); and Horticulture Institute, Jiangsu Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Nanjing 210014, China (S.W.)
In this paper, we describe a reliable method for the screening and selection of Arabidopsis transgenic seeds within minutes without germination. Expression of the Aspergillus niger -glucosidase gene BGL1 in the plant's endoplasmic reticulum was used as a visual marker, together with 4-methylumbelliferyl- -D-glucopyranoside (MUGluc) as a substrate. Subsequent to incubation in a solution of MUGluc at room temperature for 2 to 15 min, transgenic seeds expressing BGL1 demonstrated a distinct fluorescent signal under UV light. Optimal screening conditions at room temperature were achieved between 75 and 450 µM MUGluc, at a pH of 2.5 to 5.0 and 2 to 5 min of incubation. No significant loss of viability was detected in transgenic seeds that were redried and stored for 45 d after incubation in MUGluc solution for 2 to 150 min. Transgenic plants expressing BGL1 displayed normal phenotypes relative to the wild type. Selection frequency was 3.1% ± 0.34% for the fluorescence selection method, while kanamycin resistant selection resulted in only 0.56% ± 0.13% using the same seed batch. This novel selection method is nondestructive, practical, and efficient, and eliminates the use of antibiotic genes. In addition, the procedure shortens the selection time from weeks to minutes.
Arabidopsis is widely used as a model organism for studying the molecular and cellular biology of plants (Page and Grossniklaus, 2002
Selecting transformed Arabidopsis plants requires germinating the seeds and growing the seedlings under the stress of selective agents. Identification and selection of transgenic seedlings often takes several weeks. Once selection is achieved, an additional time period of months is required to obtain seeds which may or may not contain the transgene. A recently developed method using fluorescent proteins as visual selection markers permits the identification of mature transformed seeds by fluorescence microscopy (Jach et al., 2001
Expression of the Aspergillus niger -Glucosidase Gene BGL1 in the Arabidopsis Ecotype Columbia
Arabidopsis plants were transformed with Agrobacterium tumefaciens LB4404 harboring the binary vector pBINPlus (van Engelen et al., 1995
Fifteen independent transgenic lines were obtained by selection on kanamycin (Clough and Bent, 1998 -glucosidase zymogram confirmed the presence of BGL1 protein with the expected molecular mass of the A. niger native enzyme (120 kD; Dan et al., 2000 -glucosidase activity (Fig. 1, B and C). Wild-type plants exhibited neither -glucosidase activity nor cross-reaction with the anti-BGL1 antibodies (Fig. 1, B and C). The seeds of transgenic lines 1, 3, 6, and 11 were maintained for the optimization of seed-screening conditions.
The excitation wavelength of 4-methylumbelliferone, released from 4-methylumbelliferyl-
Both dry and water-imbibed transgenic seeds incubated with MUGluc (75 µM, pH 4.0) showed a significantly stronger fluorescent signal than the wild-type controls (Fig. 2A). As expected, wild-type seeds also demonstrated a certain amount of fluorescence due to the presence of intrinsic fluorescent compounds such as flavonoids and aromatic amino acids. Both transgenic and wild-type seeds that were imbibed overnight in water exhibited a higher fluorescent background than did dry seeds despite the fact that all treatments with MUGluc only lasted a few minutes. Therefore, the high background most likely resulted from leakage of low-molecular-weight metabolites into the surrounding solution (Bewley, 1997
To determine the optimal pH range for seed screening, dry seeds were incubated in one of a series of 75-µM MUGluc solutions with increasing pHs. Wild-type seeds fluoresced, and there were no visually significant differences in signal intensity after incubation in solutions with pHs ranging between 2.5 and 5.5 (Fig. 2B). This is consistent with the results of pH-dependent activity reported for A. niger BGL1 (Shoseyov et al., 1988 MUGluc solutions at different concentrations (0450 µM, pH 4.0) were used to determine the minimum effective substrate concentration necessary for seed screening. The intensity of the fluorescent signals emitted from the transgenic seeds increased with increasing MUGluc concentrations, whereas those from the wild-type seeds did not change significantly (Fig. 2C). Although at the minimal concentration of 15 µM MUGluc, transgenic and wild-type seeds already exhibited an obvious visual difference in fluorescence level, higher substrate concentrations were found to maximize screening results during seed selection. At 75 µM MUGluc (pH 4.0), the fluorescent signal displayed by transgenic seeds increased with incubation time (Fig. 3). A time of 2 min was sufficient to distinguish transgenic from wild-type seeds. After 15 min incubation at room temperature (RT), the fluorescent signals of the positive seeds overwhelmed those of adjacent seeds, making it difficult to distinguish the transgenic ones from the wild type. Interfering fluorescent signals from adjacent seeds may be minimized for optimal screening by adjusting the intensity of the light source.
Mixed seeds with different proportions of transgenic seeds were incubated with 75 µM MUGluc in petri dishes (300400 seeds/plate) for 2 to 5 min. The plates were then exposed to UV (Fig. 4, A and B). Positive transformed seeds were collected with a pipette. All of the selected seeds were then sterilized and incubated with MUGluc (Fig. 4C). Individual seeds selected from the mixed populations gave strong positive signals relative to the wild-type seeds.
Fluorescence Selection Versus Kanamycin Resistant Selection The same batch of the seeds collected from Agrobacterium infected plants was divided into two groups to compare the selection frequency and reliability of fluorescence selection and kanamycin resistant selection methods. After incubation with MUGluc for 5 min, 20 plates of seeds (around 300 seeds/plate) were tested. Selection frequency was 3.1% ± 0.34%. Kanamycin resistant selection with the seeds (around 9,000 in 30 plates) from the same batch resulted in 0.56% ± 0.13% resistant seedlings, which is significantly less relative to the fluorescent selection. Furthermore, PCR tests using primers within BGL1 gene were carried out with seedlings resulted from both selection methods. All 108 seedlings resulted from fluorescent selection seeds displayed a positive PCR band as shown in Figure 5 for representative samples. Kanamycin resistant selection also resulted in 100% positive PCR reaction in all 37 selected seedlings.
Phenotype of Transgenic Plants To determine the potential existence of phenotypic variance between transgenic and wild-type plants, T2 transgenic lines 1, 3, 6, and 11, as well as wild-type plants, were grown in a greenhouse. In a comparison with nontransgenic plants, no abnormal phenotype was detected among the lines of transgenic plants expressing A. niger BGL1 targeted to the ER (Table I).
Germination of the Screened Seeds Transgenic seeds incubated in the MUGluc solution for 2 to 150 min were redried and stored for 45 d. Number of leaves, plant height, total seed weight, and percent of seed germination were tested. No significant loss in viability or plant-growth performance was detected following up to 150 min of incubation (Table I). Longer incubation times resulted in reduced germination rate (not shown).
In plant molecular biology, fluorogenic chemicals such as 4-methylumbelliferyl glucuronide and 4-methylumbelliferyl galactoside have been widely used for the detection of reporter-gene proteins, mainly due to their higher sensitivity (Martin et al., 1992 -glucosidase gene BGL1 were employed to screen for and select dry transformed Arabidopsis seeds without the need for seed germination. With this method, screening and selection can be achieved within just minutes (Fig. 3). In addition, the selected seeds can be redried and stored for later germination without significant loss in viability (Table I). As a result, further analysis on the transgenic seeds can be done directly with these selected transgenic seeds and the primary transgenic plants at various growth and developmental stages can be characterized by simply growing the selected seeds. This may confer a significant savings in time over the antibiotic transgenic plant-selection protocols employing antibiotics or herbicides as the selective agents. The conventional selection of transformed Arabidopsis plants requires seed germination and growth under the stress of selective agents, followed by an additional interval of at least several days to distinguish between transgenic and nontransgenic plants. Although some analysis of primary transgenic seedlings at their later growth stages after selection is also possible, usually characterization of transgenic plants is conducted on transgenic progenies of later generations due to the negative impact of these selective agents on plant growth. For this reason, it is often necessary to wait additional months to obtain seeds that may or may not contain the transgene. Parallel experiments using the same seed batch harvested from infected plants were conducted to compare fluorescence selection versus kanamycin resistance selection. Selection frequency obtained with fluorescence selection was significantly higher than that obtained with kanamycin selection. This could result from insufficient level of expression of the NPTII in some of the transgenic plants due to position effect of the T-DNA insertion site. In general, every negative selection method such as resistance to antibiotics or to herbicide is limited by the set point of the selection agent concentration, while positive selection method is limited by the sensitivity and the signal to noise ratio.
Recently Stuitje et al. (2003)
The C-terminal HDEL sequence has been reported to be sufficient for the retention of secreted recombinant proteins in the plant ER (Gomord et al., 1997
Plant Growth For plant gene transformation, Arabidopsis plants (ecotype Columbia) were planted at a density of 2 to 5/25-cm2 pot containing peat, vermiculite, and perlite (3:2:1, v/v). They were grown to the flowering stage in a shaded greenhouse, 24°C day/20°C night, 13 to 14 h light and average midday photon flux density of 200 to 250 µE m2 s1. To compare the phenotypes of the transgenic and nontransgenic plants, 30 transgenic plants each from independent lines 1, 3, 6, and 11, and 40 wild-type plants were grown in the afore described pots (1 plant/pot) and maintained under the same conditions. Percent germination, number of rosette leaves, plant height, and seed weight of each plant were recorded.
The chimeric gene cassette (Ter) was constructed in the intermediate plasmid pJD330 (Gallie et al., 1987
The seeds from the transfected plants were harvested and surface-sterilized with 30% bleach (2.5% sodium hypochlorite, final concentration) in 65% ethanol for 5 min, followed by 3 rinses with 100% ethanol, and dried overnight in a laminar hood. Sterilized seeds were plated on kanamycin selection media according to Clough and Bent (1998)
Seeds which had been imbibed overnight with distilled, sterilized water were rinsed three times in sterilized water. A series of solutions with varying pHs or increasing concentrations of MUGluc (M3633, Sigma, St. Louis) were prepared in 25 mM citric buffer. Unless otherwise specified, the substrate solutions used in the experiments contained 75 µM MUGluc at a pH of 4.0. To facilitate seed dispersion, all substrate solutions contained 0.1% (w/v) agarose. Drops of substrate solutions (95 µL each) were placed in rows in 25-cm petri dishes. To each drop, 5 to 10 seeds were added and quickly mixed with the aid of a Pasteur pipette. The petri dishes containing the seeds were then immediately moved into the dark chamber of an M-2 UV transilluminator (UVP, Upland, CA) and maintained for a predetermined incubation period. To minimize exposure of the seeds to UV during the photographic process, the UV light was activated for only approximately 5 to 10 s.
Transgenic and wild-type plant seeds were weighed and vortexed to obtain seed mixtures of 1%, 10%, and 30% CBT in the wild type. The seeds (about 5 mg, accounting for about 300 seeds) were then quickly mixed with 10 mL of MUGluc solution in a petri dish and kept there for 2 to 5 min. Then, the seeds were exposed to UV light and the positive ones were picked out by Pasteur pipette. To test seed-selection reliability, the selected as well as wild-type seeds were sterilized and placed in the wells of an ELISA plate, one per well; 100 µL of 75 µM MUGluc solution (25 mM citric buffer, pH 4.0) was then added to each well, and the plate was incubated at 37°C for 4 h, after which the plate was exposed to UV light.
The same batch of dry seeds collected from Agrobacterium infected plants after flower-dip was divided into two groups. One group for kanamycin resistant selection was sterilized, dried, and plated on selective media as described above. Three weeks later, seedlings with green leaves and roots were transplanted into peat, vermiculite, and perlite (3:2:1, v/v) and kept in the greenhouse. The other group subjected to MUGluc fluorescent selection was treated and screened as described in the mixed-seed screening section. The selected seeds were rinsed with sterilized water three times and plated on wet Whatman paper in petri dish. After 2 d at 4°C, seeds were moved into a growth chamber with 22°C, 16 h of photoperiod, and photon flux density of 50 µE m2 s1. The resultant seedlings were then transplanted and kept in the greenhouse. The numbers of selected seeds and seedlings over total number of seeds or seedlings tested were calculated as selection frequency.
Plant genomic DNA extracts obtained from selected seedlings grown in the greenhouse were used as a template in PCR reaction. A sense primer (5'-ggggagaagcccgcccagttacgaccaccgtccggacttctac-3') and an antisense primer (5'-gtcaggttcctgcgggcacctaggtttccgtc-3') within BGL1 gene were used to amplify a PCR product with expected size near 1,100 bp.
Transgenic and wild-type seeds were incubated in a 75-µM MUGluc solution (pH 4.0) containing 1% agarose for different periods (2 min6 h) and then exposed briefly to UV. These seeds were moved onto a Whatman filter paper and dried with hair dryer (33°C) for 5 min and then kept in a hood overnight. Redried seeds were sealed with parafilm in petri dishes (25 cm) and kept at RT for 45 d. For germination, seeds were imbibed with sterile water. The seeds were maintained for 2 d at 4°C, then at RT for an additional 3 d. Germination percentages for all treatments (about 300 seeds/treatment) were calculated. Sequence data from this article have been deposited with the EMBL/GenBank data libraries under accession numbers X98543 and AJ132386.
1 This work was supported by the Eugine and Edith Schhoenberger Foundation. www.plantphysiol.org/cgi/doi/10.1104/pp.104.040709. * Corresponding author; e-mail shoseyov{at}agri.huji.ac.il; fax 97289462283.
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