Abstract
The perennial plants in the family Primulaceae, genus Cyclamen (Cyclamen persicum) are one of the most important ornamental pot plants in winter. The flower colors and patterns are important characters for ornamental purposes. The method of domain-dependent gene silencing procedure is called the Chimeric Repressor Gene-Silencing Technology (CRES-T). This CREST-T method allows us to convert transcriptional activators into transcriptional repressors. As a result, the product becomes dominant trait and resulting to suppress the target gene expressions and to cause loss-of-function phenotypes at high frequency. In this studies, we isolated the class C MADS-box gene, AGAMOUS, from cyclamen and analyzed the functions. Then, we tried the modification of flower traits in cyclamen using the CRES-T. Each vector, which contains a cauliflower mosaic virus (CaMV) 35S promoter, was introduced into cyclamen by Agrobacterium-mediated transformation techniques. The transgenic plants were evaluated the several characters. This work was supported by Programe for Promotion of Basic and Applied Researches for Innovations in Bio-oriented Industry.
