The influence of matrix attachment regions on transgene expression in Arabidopsis thaliana wild type and gene silencing mutants

Many studies in both animal and plant systems have shown that matrix attachment regions (MARs) can increase the expression of flanking transgenes. However, our previous studies revealed no effect of the chicken lysozyme MARs (chiMARs) on transgene expression in the first generation transgenic Arabidopsis thaliana plants transformed with a beta-glucuronidase gene (uidA) unless gene silencing mutants were used as genetic background for transformation. In the present study, we investigated why chiMARs do not influence transgene expression in transgenic wild-type Arabidopsis plants. We first studied the effect of chiMARs on transgene expression in the progeny of primary transformants harboring chiMAR-flanked T-DNAs. Our data indicate that chiMARs do not affect transgene expression in consecutive generations of wild-type A. thaliana plants. Next, we examined whether these observed results in A. thaliana transformants are influenced by the applied transformation method. The results from in vitro transformed A. thaliana plants are in accordance with those from in planta transformed A. thaliana plants and again reveal no influence of chiMARs on transgene expression in A. thaliana wild-type transformants. The effect of chiMARs on transgene expression is also examined in in vitro transformed Nicotiana tabacum plants, but as for A. thaliana, the transgene expression in tobacco transformants is not altered by the presence of chiMARs. Taken together, our results show that the applied method or the plant species used for transformation does not influence whether and how chiMARs have an effect on transgene expression. Finally, we studied the effect of MARs (tabMARs) of plant origin (tobacco) on the transgene expression in A. thaliana wild-type plants and suppressed gene silencing (sgs2) mutants. Our results clearly show that similar to chiMARs, the tobacco-derived MARs do not enhance transgene expression in a wild-type background but can be used to enhance transgene expression in a mutant impaired in gene silencing

Stable high-level transgene expression in Arabidopsis thaliana using gene silencing mutants and matrix attachment regions

Basic and applied research involving transgenic plants often requires consistent high-level expression of transgenes. However, high inter-transformant variability of transgene expression caused by various phenomena, including gene silencing, is frequently observed. Here, we show that stable, high-level transgene expression is obtained using Arabidopsis thaliana post-transcriptional gene silencing (PTGS) sgs2 and sgs3 mutants. In populations of first generation (T1) A. thaliana plants transformed with a beta-glucuronidase (GUS) gene (uidA) driven by the 35S cauliflower mosaic virus promoter (p35S), the incidence of highly expressing transformants shifted from 20% in wild type background to 100% in sgs2 and sgs3 backgrounds. Likewise, when sgs2 mutants were transformed with a cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor 6 gene under control of p35S, all transformants showed a clear phenotype typified by serrated leaves, whereas such phenotype was only observed in about one of five wild type transformants. p35S-driven uidA expression remained high and steady in T2 sgs2 and sgs3 transformants, in marked contrast to the variable expression patterns observed in wild type T2 populations. We further show that T-DNA constructs flanked by matrix attachment regions of the chicken lysozyme gene (chiMARs) cause a boost in GUS activity by fivefold in sgs2 and 12-fold in sgs3 plants, reaching up to 10% of the total soluble proteins, whereas no such boost is observed in the wild type background. MAR-based plant transformation vectors used in a PTGS mutant background might be of high value for efficient high-throughput screening of transgene-based phenotypes as well as for obtaining extremely high transgene expression in plants