著者
Kenta Watanabe Chihiro Oda-Yamamizo Kimiyo Sage-Ono Akemi Ohmiya Michiyuki Ono
出版者
Japanese Society for Plant Biotechnology
雑誌
Plant Biotechnology (ISSN:13424580)
巻号頁・発行日
vol.34, no.4, pp.177-185, 2018-01-25 (Released:2018-01-27)
参考文献数
53
被引用文献数
8 7

Japanese morning glory, Ipomoea nil, has several coloured flowers except yellow, because it can accumulate only trace amounts of carotenoids in the petal. To make the petal yellow with carotenoids, we introduced five carotenogenic genes (geranylgeranyl pyrophosphate synthase, phytoene synthase, lycopene β-cyclase and β-ring hydroxylase from Ipomoea obscura var. lutea and bacterial phytoene desaturase from Pantoea ananatis) to white-flowered I. nil cv. AK77 with a petal-specific promoter by Rhizobium (Agrobacterium)-mediated transformation method. We succeeded to produce transgenic plants overexpressing carotenogenic genes. In the petal of the transgenic plants, mRNA levels of the carotenogenic genes were 10 to 1,000 times higher than those of non-transgenic control. The petal colour did not change visually; however, carotenoid concentration in the petal was increased up to about ten-fold relative to non-transgenic control. Moreover, the components of carotenoids in the petal were diversified, in particular, several β-carotene derivatives, such as zeaxanthin and neoxanthin, were newly synthesized. This is the first report, to our knowledge, of changing the component and increasing the amount of carotenoid in petals that lack ability to biosynthesize carotenoids.