Metabolic manipulation of plants to improve their nutritional quality is an important …

• Abstract
• Introduction
• Materials and Methods
• Results and Discussion
• Conclusion
• Acknowledgements
• References
• Figures
• Tables

Biology Articles » Biotechnology » Green Biotechnology » High-level tryptophan accumulation in seeds of transgenic rice and its limited effects on agronomic traits and seed metabolite profile » Conclusion

Conclusion

- High-level tryptophan accumulation in seeds of transgenic rice and its limited effects on agronomic traits and seed metabolite profile

These results have revealed that the seeds of rice plants expressing the OASA1D transgene accumulate free Trp to high levels and in a stable manner. This accumulation of Trp was not accompanied by substantial changes in the amounts of other phenolic compounds. The growth of OASA1D plants under the field conditions used here revealed a reduction in spikelet fertility and in the number of spikelets per panicle, as well as in the efficiency of seed germination compared with Nipponbare. However, these differences with Nipponbare were more prominent in the HW1 line than in the HW5 line, the latter being largely similar to the wild type with regard to many agronomic traits.

For use as human food, it is preferable that transgenic crops do not contain antibiotic resistance genes. An advantage of OASA1D transgenic rice is that the transgene confers sufficient resistance to 5MT to allow the selection of transformed cells with this agent, thereby obviating the need for another gene as a selectable marker (Yamada et al., 2004). Although rice is primarily grown for human consumption, its use for animal feed has been recently developed (Sakai et al., 2003a). An increased Trp content of rice seed would thus also prove beneficial for animal nutrition.