Abstract
Circadian clocks allow plants to adapt their daily physiological activities to the daily changes in the environment. The Lemnaceae (duckweed) family are monocot plants. Two species in the Lemna genus, L. gibba and L. paucicostata are a long-day and a short-day plant respectively. There are many physiological studies of their circadian rhythms. We developed a real-time monitoring system of circadian gene expression in Lemnaceae using the combination of the particle-bombardment method and bioluminescent reporter genes.
To study the functions of the endogenous clock genes in Lemnaceae in detail, we have been trying to develop a stable-transformation method. By using an Agrobacterium-mediated transformation of Lemna calli, the reporter-gene expression was detected in the callused cells. Through the analyses of Lemna calli, it was suggested that the circadian rhythm of them appeared to be different from that of Lemna plants. We will report the progress of the gene introduction method for Lemna calli, and discuss the properties of promoter activities and circadian rhythms in them.
