[Erh-Min Lai] AGROBEST: advances in transient expression technology

Transient gene expression via Agrobacterium-mediated DNA transfer offers a simple and fast method to analyze gene functions. Despite powerful genetic and genomic resources, achieving highly efficient and consistent transient expression for gene function analysis in Arabidopsis as the most studied model plant remains challenging. Erh-Min Lai’s group, in collaboration with Shu-Hsing Wu’s group at the Institute of Plant and Microbial Biology and Jen Sheen’s group at Department of Molecular Biology, Massachusetts General Hospital, have developed a highly efficient and robust Agrobacterium-mediated transient expression system, named AGROBEST (Agrobacterium-mediated enhanced seedling transformation), for gene functional analyses. This work is published online (Wu et al., 2014. Plant Methods) and selected as “editor picks”. In this study, they demonstrated the versatile applicability of the AGROBEST method for examining transcription factor actions and circadian reporter-gene regulation, as well as protein subcellular localization and protein–protein interactions in physiological contexts. This simple, fast, reliable, and robust transient expression system elevates the transient expression technology to the level of functional studies in Arabidopsis seedlings and offers a new system to dissect the molecular mechanisms involved in Agrobacterium-mediated DNA transfer.