Studies of Introduction of Antifungal Genes into Cotton Plants by Laser Microbeam Puncture

Abstract: Using cotton susceptive seed-germinating embryos as transgenic receptor, the bivalent genes pBIBGC, which includes β-1,3-glucanase gene and chitinase gene, was introduced into cotton by Laser Microbeam Puncture Techniques (LMPT). There are npt-Ⅱ(neomycin phosphotransferase Ⅱ) gene as screening marker in the plant bivalent expression vector. From treated embryos by laser transformation, resistant plantlets have been obtained after kanamycin resistance screening. In this research, we have also studied some key factors that influenced LMPT, such as the duration of pretreatment of susceptive seed-germinating embryos and hypertonic treatment, and so on. The results indicated that the LMPT was easy to operate and repetitive. The foreign genes were introduced into susceptive seed-germinating embryos by this technique, which avoids difficulties of regeneration of plantlets.