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019-028
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Transgenic plant, transformation technology, Agrobacteria, Arabidopsis, floral dip method, binary vectors
- abstract
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For more than two decades Agrobacterium-mediated stable genetic transformation of plant cells is a routine laboratory method to generate transgenic plants. The natural capability of Agrobacterium tumefaciens to infect plants is thereby exploited for transferring foreign genes into plant cells. During stable transformation engineered DNA fragments are integrated into the plant genome and can be passed on to the next generations. The host specificity of Agrobacteria to plant species is limited and the genetic mechanisms underlying host specificity are complex. Besides Arabidopsis thaliana, Agrobacterium tumefaciens is also capable of suc-cessfully transforming a large variety of other plant species, such as maize or rice. Using Agrobacteria to transform Arabidopsis is straightforward, requiring only standard laboratory equipment. Transformation by floral dip is easy and can be performed by non-specialists. Due to its small size, short generation time, high seed production and easy handling, Arabidopsis, which has emerged as model organism for plant biology research, is frequently chosen to generate transgenic plants. This review focuses on the generation of transgenic Arabidopsis plants by Agrobacteria using the floral dip method. Besides a simplified protocol for the Agrobacterium-mediated transformation, we here describe common Agrobacterium strains and suitable binary T-DNA vectors. Further, we focus on plant selection to finally isolate homozygous transgenic mutant lines.
