Studies on the Splicing Ability of Wx Gene Intron 1 in Glutinous Rice

Two chimeric plasmids with Wx gene promoter(from O.sativa subsp. indica cv. 232)、 Wx first intron (from O.sativa subsp. indica cv. 232 or subsp. japonica cv. Hanfeng) and coding region of GUS reporter gene were constructed(Fig. 1), then they were introduced into glutinous rice O.sativa subsp. japonica cv.Fengnuo 593. These two chimeric genes were also introduced into nonglutinous indica rice Teqing and japonica rice Zhonghua11 to serve as control. The GUS activities in the transformed calli(Fig. 2) and the immature seeds of transgenic plants(Fig. 3) were determined. The data show that these two plasmids conferred a level of GUS activities on glutinous rice as high as that on nonglutinous rice, which suggests that glutinous rice has normol activity to splice intron 1 from transcript of waxy gene,and the lack of amylose in grains of glutinous rice may be caused by other mutations located in Wx intron 1.