Abstract
The flower color could be modified to be deep yellow/orange by introducing carotenoid/xanthophyll biosynthetic genes into the pale-yellow colored petunia, whose petal contains carotenoid. Especially, ketolase gene (crtW) from Agrobacterium aurantiacum caused remarkable change of the color of the petal and is useful to detect the expression of the gene product. Histochemical analysis demonstrated that white-colored petunia contains few leucoplasts in petal cells and that in pale-yellow colored petunia, there are chloroplasts in cells near vein and other cells contain chromoplasts. No change was observed in the plastid of crtW-transformed petunia showing orange color flower. Moreover, in order to generate deep-orange colored petunia, various transit peptides were added to crtW and the transformants were obtained. Various flower color value of the tarnsformants revealed that there is compatibility of the transit peptide sequences exists in the expression of the crtW product.
