Plant transformation vector

Plant transformation vectors

Plant transformation vectors are plasmids that have been specifically designed to facilitate the generation of transgenic plants. The most commonly used plant transformation vectors are termed binary vectors because of their ability to replicate in both "E. coli" and "Agrobacterium tumefaciens".Plant Transformation vectors contain three key elements;

¤ Plasmids Selection

¤ Plasmids Replication

¤ T-DNA region

Plasmid Selection

In order for a plasmid to be distinguished from bacterial cells that do not contain a binary vector, a plasmid selection genes is needed. In many cases this is a resistance to antibiotic such as kanamycin, ampicillin, spectinomycin or tetracyclin. This antibiotic gene is not usually transferred to the plant cell but remains within the bacterial cell

Plasmids Replication

Plasmids replicate to produce many plasmid molecules in each bacterial cell. The number of copies of each plasmid in a bacterial cell is determined by the replication origin. This is the position within the plasmids molecule where DNA replication is initiated. Most binary vectors have a higher number of plasmids copies when they replicate in "E. coli", the plasmid copy-number is usually less when the plasmid resident within "Agrobacterium tumefaciens".

T-DNA region

External links

* [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=11044722&dopt=Abstract Technical Focus:a guide to Agrobacterium binary Ti vectors] "Trends in Plant Science" 5(10): 446-451 2000