Plant promoters: Characterization and applications in transgenic technology

Abstract

Plant growth, development and adaptation are regulated by gene expression, in which promoters, the cis-acting elements that initiate transcription, play a pivotal role. This chapter on plant promoter characterization and applications is split into three major sections. The first section describes the structural features of plant promoters followed by their types along with examples. The understanding that promoters are a complex region of various interacting structural elements has encouraged researchers to develop synthetic promoters, and a subsection is devoted to discuss various such promoters developed. Different approaches available for promoter isolation, identification and their functional characterization are presented in the next section. This section also gives information on various mutant resources, and tools and databases available which help researchers in acquiring appropriate material for promoter isolation in model crops and carry out bioinformatic analysis of the promoter sequences/elements identified, respectively. All the related molecular techniques are also presented in brief. In transgenic development, the choice of promoter remains an important aspect which not only determines the efficiency of the transgenic crop but also might have implications in its biosafety. The third section describes various transgenic crops commercialized or in pipeline (which have completed biosafety trials) in relation to the specific promoters used in their development.