Generation of Transgenic Napier Grass (Cenchrus purpureus Schum.) Plants by Biolistic Gene Transfer of a Minimal Expression Cassette

• Published in: Tropical plant biology Vol. 14; no. 4; pp. 371 - 380
• Main Authors: Faleiro, F. G., Kim, J. Y., Parikh, A., Altpeter, F.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Springer US 01.12.2021; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Antibiotic resistance; Antibiotics; Biofuels; Biomedical and Life Sciences; Callus; Cenchrus purpureus; Crop improvement; Editing; Gene transfer; Genetic engineering; Genetic transformation; Geneticin; Genome editing; Genomes; Grasses; Life Sciences; Paromomycin; Plant Breeding/Biotechnology; Plant Ecology; Plant Genetics and Genomics; Plant Sciences; Transgenic plants; Transgenics; II; Schum.; Transgenic; Genetic engineering; Napier grass; Minimal expression cassette; Embryogenic callus; Biolistic gene transfer
• ISSN: 1935-9756; 1935-9764
• DOI: 10.1007/s12042-021-09298-z

Napier grass ( Cenchrus purpureus Schum.) is one of the highest yielding tropical C4 forage grasses and a promising candidate feedstock for the production of biofuel. Genetic engineering and genome editing have tremendous potential for crop improvement and require the establishment of a transformation protocol. In this study, transgenic Napier grass was generated by introducing a minimal cassette (MC) encoding the antibiotic resistance gene npt II with biolistic gene transfer into embryogenic callus. Paromomycin was superior to geneticin as a selective agent in the selection of transgenic calli. Two high-biomass producing Napier grass accessions were successfully transformed. Southern blot analysis revealed simple transgene integration patterns with 33% of the regenerated transgenic lines having a single insert of the minimal transgene expression cassette. NPTII-ELISA confirmed transgene expression in all transgenic lines. The results of this study will enable the acceleration of Napier grass improvement by genetic transformation or genome editing.