Open AccessThe long road to recombinase‐mediated plant transformation
Author(s) -
Ow David W.
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
plant biotechnology journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.525
H-Index - 115
eISSN - 1467-7652
pISSN - 1467-7644
DOI - 10.1111/pbi.12472
Subject(s) - recombinase , biology , gene , transformation (genetics) , site specific recombination , locus (genetics) , genetics , computational biology , transgene , genome , gene targeting , cre recombinase , microbiology and biotechnology , recombination , genetically modified mouse
Summary The use of site‐specific recombinases to manipulate eukaryotic genomes began nearly three decades ago. Although seemingly parallel efforts were being made in animal and plant systems, the motivation for its development in plants was unique to, at least at the time, crop bioengineering issues. The impetus behind site‐specific deletion in plants was to remove antibiotic resistance genes used during transformation but unnecessary in commercial products. Site‐specific integration in plants was more than academic curiosity of position effects on gene expression, but a necessary step towards developing the serial stacking of DNA to the same chromosome locus – to insure that bioengineered crops can be improved over time through transgene additions without inflating the number of segregating loci. This article is not a review of the literature on site‐specific recombination, but a first person account of the series of events leading to the development of a gene stacking transformation system in plants.