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Nontransgenic crops from transgenic plants

Nature Biotechnology volume 20, pages 215–216 (2002)Cite this article

It is possible to produce nontransgenic crops from transgenic plants. The transgenic sequence is deleted by tissue-specific or chemically induced excision from plants in the field. An inducible promoter drives expression of a gene for a site-specific recombinase, such as Cre, which excises a transgenic cassette located between two recombinase sites (loxP). Inducible promoters and recombinases that work well in plants have already been developed. While retaining the benefits of transgenic technology, the removal of transgenes from specific tissues in crop plants may be a pragmatic way to address certain public concerns regarding transgenic technology, such as food safety, gene dispersal (via pollen or seed), seed replanting, and identity preservation.

In the current generation of transgenic plants, transgenes are typically expressed throughout the plant. Such continuous and ubiquitous expression has several drawbacks (e.g., yield drag) and is not always necessary; often the transgene is required only in a subset of tissues within the plant. In nematode control, for example, expression of the resistance trait is required only in the roots. Thus in soybeans engineered for nematode resistance, with the root as the target tissue, the transgene need not be present in the edible portion of the plant. Similarly, plants containing transgenes encoding input traits, such as resistance to insects, fungi, nematodes, herbicides, and certain output traits may not have to contain these genes in the pollen, seed, or fruit.

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Figure 1: In the current generation of transgenic crops, every tissue of the plants is transgenic, including the fruit.
Figure 2: The transgenic cassette contains a tissue-specific or chemically inducible promoter driving a recombinase gene (such as Cre) and a second promoter driving a payload gene encoding the trait of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Robert J. Keenan is staff scientist and Willem P.C. Stemmer is vice president of R&D, Maxygen, Inc., Redwood City, 94063, CA

    Robert J. Keenan & Willem P.C. Stemmer

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  1. Robert J. Keenan
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  2. Willem P.C. Stemmer
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Keenan, R., Stemmer, W. Nontransgenic crops from transgenic plants. Nat Biotechnol 20, 215–216 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt0302-215

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