J. Troy Weeks (United States Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service, Western Regional Research Center, Albany, Calif.): "Although wheat was transformed genetically in 1992 (V. Vasil et al., Bio/Technology, 10:667 74, 1992), an improved transformation system had yet to be established to make bioengineering of this grain crop experimentally practical. Our goal was to develop a protocol for wheat transformation that would allow any suitably equipped laboratory to achieve transformation on their first try. We were successful in establishing a transformation protocol that yielded multiple transformed wheat lines without excessive effort, was reproducible on a regular basis, and yielded fertile transgenic lines that passed on the genotypes and phenotypes to successive generations. The protocol also makes it feasible, for the first time, to study protomer and protein functions in trans- genic wheat.
"Our protocol describes certain key elements that appear to influence transformation efficiency, frequency, and success. We used the ...
