Agrobacterium-mediated method

Because Agrobacterium has the ability to insert a segment of DNA (T-DNA) from its Ti plasmid into the chromosome of the host plant cell, the target gene can be introduced into the recipient plant cell with the help of Agrobacterium after inserting the target gene into the middle of the T-DNA and the transgenic plant can be obtained by taking advantage of the totipotency of the cell, which is the basic principle of the Agrobacterium-mediated method of transgenesis in plants. This method has the unique advantages of easy operation, low cost, high efficiency, good certainty of inserted fragments and low copy number, so it has become the preferred method for transgenesis of most crops.

The biggest drawback of Agrobacterium-mediated transformation is that the ability and efficiency of transformation are greatly limited by the genotype of the host plant, and monocotyledonous plants are not natural hosts of Agrobacterium, so it is even more difficult to be transformed. It is gratifying that in recent years, Agrobacterium-mediated genetic transformation of monocotyledonous crops such as maize, rice, barley and wheat (Cheng et al., 1997) has made a series of breakthroughs, and in 1998, Liu Qingfa et al. reported for the first time in China on the research of Agrobacterium-mediated genetic transformation of wheat. 1999, Xia Guangmin et al. reported again on the work of genetic transformation of wheat using Agrobacterium-mediated genetic transformation, and some of the wheat plants were converted by Agrobacterium. In 1999, Xia Guangmin et al. again reported the genetic transformation of wheat using Agrobacterium-mediated transformation, and the transformation efficiency of some wheat varieties reached 5.9%. 2000 saw a rapid increase in the number of Agrobacterium-mediated wheat transgenic research reports, and transgenic research on insect-resistant wheat became the focus of research. Since 2002, the number of Agrobacterium-mediated wheat transgenic research reports has been increasing rapidly at a rate of about 8-10 papers per year, and the cumulative number of related papers published in 2006 reached more than 40, which accounted for about 15% of the total number of wheat transgenic research reports.