Improvement of Bioenergy Crops Via Transformation

Principal Investigator: Jack M. Widholm, U. of Illinois
Co-PI: John A. Juvik
Researchers: Vera Lozovaya, Olga Zernova, Qiang Liu, Nadeza Kholina, Li Zhang, Xiaoguang Chen
Graduate Student: Hyoung Seok Kim

The overall objective of this project is to develop a plant regeneration and transformation system for Miscanthus x giganteus and one its parental species, M. sinensis.

The more specific objectives are:

Develop plant regeneration and transformation systems for M. x giganteus, and M. sinensis using Agrobacteriumtumefaciens as the vector.

We have been able to regeneratemany M. x giganteus plants using immature inflorescences from both greenhouse and field-grown plants as explants to initiate regenerable callusand have also regenerated many plants from M. sinensis callus initiated from seedlings. Callus of M. x giganteus has also been transformed using both particle bombardment and Agrobacterium tumefaciens with the bar gene and selection with bialaphos or phosphinothricin to produce over 40 transformed lines and plants have been regenerated. 

This project should be able to develop plant regeneration and transformation techniques that can be utilized for Miscanthus improvement by this lab and by others. We feel that we can accomplish this goal since all the proposed experiments are under way with good progress being made.

2009 Project Update:
Miscanthus x giganteus has a high potential as a biomass crop due to its very high productivity and low input costs. It may be useful to be able to introduce genes into M. x giganteus, but at present there are no published protocols for transforming M. x giganteus. This project explored the development of  methods using Agrobacterium tumefaciens as the method of DNA delivery. While the alteration and manipulation of many traits can be enhanced by using inserted transgenes in most crops, it is especially important with M. x giganteus since the plants are sterile hybrids between M. sinensis and M. sacchariflorus so they cannot be modified in the usual way by breeders. Plants have been regenerated from cultures initiated from M. x giganteus immature inflorescences and M. sinensis seedlings. Recent evaluation of these plants showed no phenotypic variation or DNA content changes caused by the tissue culture and plant regeneration.