[Chih-Hang Wu] A chemical inducible gene expression system on Nicotiana benthamiana
POST:
Using Cre recombinase to increase the tightness of the copper-inducible gene expression system
Chemical-inducible gene expression systems are widely used to regulate gene expression in organisms for functional genomics research. However, in the model solanaceous plant Nicotiana benthamiana, a convenient system for tightly controlling transgene expression is still lacking. In this study, we developed a tightly regulated copper-inducible system to control transgene expression in N. benthamiana. To enhance the tightness of regulation, we adopted synthetic biology approaches and incorporated suicide exon and Cre recombinase as additional regulatory elements. This new design allowed us to tightly control the expression of various tested reporter genes and hypersensitive cell death responses. Our findings provide a new tool for basic and applied research in plant functional genomics.
Bing-Jen Chiang, the first author of this paper, is a research assistant. Kuan-Yu Lin, the co-first author, is an undergraduate student supported by the Summer Internship Programs of the Institute of Plant and Microbial Biology and the Undergraduate Research Program of the National Science Council of Taiwan.