A Highly Efficient System to Remove Foreign Genes from the Pollen Genome of Transgenic Plants

摘要

Although the potentially negative environmental impact of genetically modified (GM) pollen has been of concern to both the public and the scientific communities, none of the existing technologies to address this problem is broadly applicable for field crops. Here we report a novel "GM-gene-deletor" system based on a combined use of FLP/FRT and Cre/loxP recombination systems. With pollen specific expression of the FLP or Cre recombinase gene, the "GM-gene-deletor" system is exceptionally efficient in deleting all functional transgenes from the pollen genome of GM plants, which may provide an excellent tool to reduce the pollen-mediated transgene pollution problem for large-scale crop production systems. In addition, the "GM—gene—deletor" system with minor modifications may be used to produce non -transgenic seeds or fruits from transgenic crops or to protect proprietary transgenic plant technologies. Furthermore, the "GM-gene-deletor" technology might be extended to animal systems for deletion of transgenes at desirable times and for improvement of the efficiency of gene knockouts.