An Efficient Agrobacterium-Mediated Genetic Transformation Method for a Monocot Model Plant, Brachypodium distachyon

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Model plants are necessary and important for advances in various research areas of plant
biology. Compared with Arabidopsis thaliana, a dicot model plant that is widely used thus
far, monocot model plants are not popular in using plant biology research. In this regard,
Brachypodium distachyon is suggested as a new and alternative monocot model plant for
economically valuable temperate grasses and cereals such as wheat and barley, and also
for bioenergy crops such as switchgrass and miscanthus. One of the major constraints in
performing plant research would be the difficulty of genetic transformation and its low
frequency. Here, we provide a detailed and improved method for Agrobacterium-mediated
genetic transformation of B. distachyon, based on our experimental experience. With
hygromycin resistance as a selectable marker, we could obtain approximately 40%−60% of
the transformation efficiency using this method, in which the process takes approximately
26 weeks to obtain T1 seeds starting from co-cultivation of immature embryos with Agro-
bacterium cells. Here, we also describe about important factors possibly contributing to the
genetic transformation of B. distachyon.