Expression of a wild-type GBSS gene introduced into an amylose-free potato mutant by Agrobacterium tumefaciens and the inheritance of the inserts at the microsporic level

Granule-bound starch synthase (GBSS) catalyses the synthesis of amylose in starch granules. Transformation of a diploid amylose-free (amf) potato mutant with the gene encoding GBSS leads to the restoration of amylose synthesis. Transformants were obtained which had wild-type levels of both GBSS activity and amylose content. It proved to be difficult to increase the amylose content above that of the wild-type potato by the introduction of additional copies of the wild-type GBSS gene. Staining of starch with iodine was suitable for investigating the degree of expression of the inserted GBSS gene in transgenic amf plants. Of the 19 investigated transformants, four had only red-staining starch in tubers indicating that no complementation of the amf mutation had occured. Fifteen complemented transformants had only blue-staining starch in tubers or tubers of different staining categories (blue, mixed and red), caused either by full or partial expression of the inserted gene. Complementation was also found in the microspores. The segregation of blue- and red-staining microspores was used to analyse the inheritance of the introduced GBSS genes. A comparison of the results from microspore staining and Southern hybridisation indicated that, in three tetraploid transgenics, the gene was probably inserted before (duplex), and in all others after, chromosome doubling (simplex). The partial complementation was not due to methylation of the HPAII/MSPI site in the promoter region. Partially complemented plants had low levels of mRNA as was found when the GBSS expression levels were inhibited by anti-sense technology.