Evaluation of Exogenous Promoters for Use in Brachiaria brizantha Transformation

Brachiaria (Poaceae) is the most important forage genus for cattle production in Brazil. The genetic breeding of this genus is limited by the incompatibility among species, differences in ploidy level and the natural cloning of plants by apomixis (Valle and Miles 1992). However, plant regeneration via tissue culture methods and genetic engineering provide an opportunity to introduce new characteristics in plants of this genus. We have developed methods for the 'genetic modification of Brachiaria brizantha cv. Marandu via biolistic transformation. A higher number of shoots was obtained with 4 mg/L 2.4-diclorophenoxyacetic acid and 0.2 mg/L benzylaminopurine in calli induction medium and 0.1 mg/L naphtaleneacetic acid and 4.0 mg/L kinetin in shoot regeneration medium. A selection curve for mannose was determined to use phospho mannose isomerase (PMI) gene of Escherichia coli as a selection marker. Calli formation was inhibited from 5 g/L mannose, even in the presence of sucrose while calli that were formed in the presence of mannose failed to develop embryos showing that PMI gene can be used for selection of transformants of this grass. Different promoters were tested to evaluate the efficiency based on the detection of the GUS gene expression (Jefferson et al. 1987). The monocot promoters, act1-D and ubi-1, resulted in higher expression levels than dicot promoters, ubi-3 and act-2, or the CaMV35S and CVMV promoters.