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Containment of transgenic trees by suppression of LEAFY

Nature Biotechnology volume 34, pages 918–922 (2016)Cite this article

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To the Editor:

Field studies and commercial use of genetically engineered (GE) trees have been limited, in large part owing to concerns over transgene flow into wild or feral tree populations1,2,3,4. Unlike other crops, trees are long-lived, weakly domesticated and their propagules can spread over several kilometers5. Although male sterility has been engineered in pine, poplar, and eucalyptus trees grown under field conditions by expression of the barnase RNase gene in anther tapetal cells6,7, barnase can reduce rates of genetic transformation and vegetative growth6. Furthermore, barnase expression may not be fully stable8. Bisexual sterility would allay concerns over seed dispersal, could be used to control invasive exotic trees, and might increase wood production9. We report the use of RNA interference (RNAi) to suppress expression of the single-copy LEAFY (LFY) gene to produce sterility in poplar.

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Figure 1: Small, late-opening catkins in sterile poplar events.
Figure 2: RNAi–PtLFY catkins were small and lacked stigmas or ovules.
Figure 3: PaLFY expression in catkins.
Figure 4: Growth phenotypes of RNAi–PtLFY trees.

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Acknowledgements

This project was supported by Biotechnology Risk Assessment Grant Program competitive grant no. 2011-68005-30407 and 2010-33522-21736, from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture and Agricultural Research Service, National Science Foundation I/UCRC Center for Advanced Forestry (grant 0736283), USDA-IFAS (grant OREZ-FS-671-R), the J. Frank Schmidt Charitable Foundation, and the TBGRC industrial cooperative at Oregon State University. We thank E. Esfandiari of Oregon State University for her assistance in testing the PaLFY qRT-PCR primers and the many Oregon State University undergraduate students who took part in field-site maintenance and data collection.

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Author notes

  1. Amy M Brunner, Richard Meilan & Olga Shevchenko

    Present address: Present addresses: Department of Forest Resources and Environmental Conservation, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia, USA (A.M.B.), Department of Forestry and Natural Resources, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, USA (R.M.), and Delaware Biotechnology Institute, Newark, Delaware, USA (O.S.).,

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Forest Ecosystems and Society, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon, USA

    Amy L Klocko, Amy M Brunner, Richard Meilan, Haiwei Lu, Cathleen Ma, Alice Morel, Kori Ault, Michael Dow, Glenn Howe, Olga Shevchenko & Steven H Strauss

  2. Department of Biological Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA

    Jian Huang & Dazhong Zhao

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  1. Amy L Klocko
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Contributions

S.H.S. oversaw the work and led the grant proposal that funded the research program; D.Z., A.L.K., K.A., J.H., H.L., R.M., O.S., C.M., M.D., S.R., A.M., and A.M.B. conducted the experiments; A.L.K., J.H., G.H., and A.M. analyzed the data; A.L.K. and S.H.S. wrote the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Steven H Strauss.

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Competing interests

S.H.S. has directed a university- and industry-funded research consortium (TBGRC) based at Oregon State University for more than two decades. Its work is directed at producing solutions to the problems of gene dispersal from genetically engineered and exotic trees.

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Editor's note: This article has been peer-reviewed.

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Supplementary Figures 1–6 and Supplementary Tables 1–6 (PDF 3175 kb)

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Klocko, A., Brunner, A., Huang, J. et al. Containment of transgenic trees by suppression of LEAFY. Nat Biotechnol 34, 918–922 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt.3636

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