Expression and Immunolocalisation of the Snowdrop Lectin, GNA in Transgenic Rice Plants

Transgenic rice (Oryza sativa L.) plants generated through particle bombardment expressed high levels of an insecticidal protein (the snowdrop lectin, GNA) directed against sap-sucking insects. Engineered plants expressed GNA either constitutively or in a tissue specific manner, depending on the nature of the promoter used to drive expression of the gene. We used specific antibodies raised against GNA to localize its expression in phloem tissue in plants engineered with the rice sucrose synthase promoter driving GNA expression. We report here molecular, biochemical and immunological analyses for fifteen independently-derived transformants out of more than 200 plants we generated.