ORIGINAL RESEARCH PAPER
PzsS3a, a novel endosperm specific promoter from maize
(Zea mays L.) induced by ABA
Yu-Feng Hu
•
Yang-ping Li
•
Junjie Zhang
•
Hanmei Liu
•
Zhiyu Chen
•
Yubi Huang
Received: 6 February 2011 / Accepted: 23 February 2011 / Published online: 6 March 2011
Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011
Abstract The maize zsS3a gene codes for starch
synthase. Transcriptional analysis revealed that it is
mainly expressed in endosperm and is induced by
abscisic acid (ABA). The 5
0
-flanking region of zsS3a
was isolated, and a 1772 bp zsS3a promoter (PzsS3a)
was fused to a Luc reporter gene with a maize Adh1
intron. Transient expression assay by bombardment
transformation showed that, although the addition
of the Adh1 intron enhanced the promoter activity
approx. 52-fold, it did not alter the promoter speci-
ficity. PzsS3a with the Adh1 intron drove the Luc
gene preferentially and it was highly expressed in the
endosperm relative to the embryo but not in the leaf
or root. Furthermore, the promoter activity in the
endosperm was enhanced four fold by 100 mM ABA.
Keywords Abscisic acid Á Endosperm Á Maize Á
Promoter Á zsS3a Gene
Introduction
Endosperm is the main storage organ of cereal crops
and provides the primary source of carbohydrate and
protein for humans and animals. Improvement of
endosperm composition and quality by genetic engi-
neering is attractive, and great achievements have
been made in this area (Bajaj and Mohanty 2005).
Cereal endosperm is also an ideal platform for the
production of recombinant proteins, offering many
advantages including cost-effective and easy agricul-
tural scale-up, high rates of protein synthesis and easy
long-term storage of recombinant protein to avoid
degradation at ambient temperatures (Takaiwa et al.
2007; Xie et al. 2011).
Endosperm specific promoters play important roles
in the genetic modification of endosperm composition
and in using endosperm as bioreactors. At present,
although several endosperm specific promoters have
been cloned and used in these applications, there are
still few available endosperm specific promoters that
cannot satisfy all the practical demands (Qu et al.
2008). Moreover, most endosperm specific promoters
are isolated from storage protein genes. Investigations
Electronic supplementary material The online version of
this article (doi:10.1007/s10529-011-0582-z) contains
supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Y.-F. Hu Á Y. Li Á Y. Huang (&)
Maize Research Institute, Sichuan Agricultural
University, Ya’an 625014, Sichuan, China
e-mail: yubihuang@sohu.com
Y.-F. Hu
e-mail: huyufeng@sohu.com
J. Zhang Á H. Liu Á Z. Chen
College of Life Science, Sichuan Agricultural University,
Ya’an 625014, Sichuan, China
Y. Huang
College of Agronomy, Sichuan Agricultural University,
Ya’an 625014, Sichuan, China
123
Biotechnol Lett (2011) 33:1465–1471
DOI 10.1007/s10529-011-0582-z