Advances on Visible and Bio-safe Selectable Marker Genes for Plant Transformation: the Genes for Anthocyanin Biosynthesis

Controversy on environment and food safety of transgenic products mainly focused on its containing antibiotics and herbicides-tolerant genes as selectable marker genes in recent years. Therefore,it is necessary and urgent to find safer and more efficient marker genes as alternatives. Some pigments,such as anthocyanin,synthesis in plants are controlled by anthocyanin synthesis enzymes and transcriptional regulatory factors. Some studies have demonstrated that visible color changes occurred in transformed phenotype by introducing these genes into plants. In addition,the products or intermediate products in anthocyanin biosynthesis pathway are all natural pigments which are benefitial to human health. Therefore,the genes or transcriptional regulatory factors responsible for anthocyanin biosynthesis could be used as selectable marker gene in plant transformation. In this paper,we gave a brief introduction of the research progress on plant transformation with visible marker genes,which was expected to provide a reference for selectable marker safety.