Fruit-Specific Promoters for Targeted Trait Modification
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
The availability of fruit-specific promoters for genetic engineering in fruit crops is limited, hindering the improvement of agronomic traits and nutritional quality, particularly in fruits like tomatoes, where traditional breeding methods face challenges such as long juvenile phases and limited genetic gains.
Innovation Solution
Development of genetic constructs containing fruit-specific promoters, such as those from citrus and plum, which are operably linked to heterologous nucleotide sequences, allowing for tissue-specific expression in plants, enabling the modification of fruit phenotypes by transforming plant cells, regenerating plants, and growing them to produce fruits with desired traits like seedlessness or enhanced nutritional content.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If traditional breeding methods are used to improve fruit crops, then genetic diversity can be maintained, but the breeding cycle is extended due to long juvenile phases and genetic gains are limited
Solution Approach 1:
The patent replaces traditional mechanical breeding methods (cross-pollination, selection, and waiting for juvenile phases) with genetic engineering techniques. By introducing exogenous genetic information through genetic constructs with fruit-specific promoters, the invention directly modifies plant traits without requiring multi-generation breeding cycles, thus substituting a time-consuming biological process with a more direct genetic manipulation approach
Solution Approach 2:
The patent applies preliminary action by pre-designing and constructing genetic elements (promoters, coding sequences, regulatory regions) in the laboratory before introducing them to the plant. The fruit-specific promoters are characterized and validated in advance to ensure they will drive expression at the desired developmental stages, allowing researchers to plan and prepare the genetic modification strategy before actual transformation, thereby accelerating the breeding process
2Reliability
If exogenous genetic information is introduced to improve fruit traits, then desired traits can be achieved, but adverse side effects on normal plant growth and development may occur without proper spatial and temporal control
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies local quality by using fruit-specific promoters that direct transgene expression to particular plant parts (fruits) rather than throughout the entire plant. This spatial control ensures that the exogenous genetic information affects only the desired organ, leaving other plant tissues and normal growth processes unaffected, thereby eliminating adverse side effects while achieving reliable trait improvement in the target tissue
Solution Approach 2:
The patent applies dynamics by using promoters that respond to developmental cues and environmental signals to regulate transgene expression temporally. The fruit-specific promoters are activated at specific developmental stages (e.g., during fruit ripening) and can be modulated by physiological signals such as ethylene, allowing the transgene expression to dynamically match the plant's growth rhythm and avoid interference with normal development at inappropriate times
3Adaptability or versatility
If fruit-specific promoters are used to direct transgene expression, then tissue-specific and development-specific expression can be achieved, but the availability of suitable promoters is limited in many fruit species
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies universality by developing a systematic approach to identify and characterize fruit-specific promoters across multiple fruit species. By establishing common methodologies for promoter isolation, characterization, and validation that can be applied universally to different species, the invention enables the discovery of species-specific promoters while creating a transferable knowledge base and toolkit that increases the overall availability of suitable promoters for genetic engineering in diverse fruit crops
Data Source
AI summary
The present disclosure provides genetic constructs containing a promotor that is useful in driving fruit-specific expression in plants. Further provided are expression vectors, transgenic plants, and plant parts containing such genetic constructs, as well as uses thereof.