Cloning of a Rice Endosperm-specific Promoter Gt 1 and Its Functional Verification

A pair of specific primer was designed according to the published sequence of the 5′ upstream sequence of rice glutelin gene Gt1 . A 929 bp sequence was amplified from genomic DNA template of an Indica rice variety 'Miyang 46' by PCR. Sequence analysis showed 12 bp difference between the cloned and the published sequences. No difference was found in known functional regions. The cloned promoter has been used in construction of Agrobacterium binary vectors with Gus reporter gene, and several transformed plants were obtained through Agrobacterium mediated transformation. Gus activity in various tissues of transformed plants was examined and the results showed that Gus gene directed by the promoter sequence of rice glutelin gene Gt 1 was tissue specifically expressed in endosperm, in contrast to the expression pattern of Gus gene directed by 35S promoter, which was expressed in all the tissues tested.