Induction of Expression Instability of the nptII Gene in Transgenic Tobacco Plants

A comparative analysis of the neomycin phosphotransferase (nptII) gene expression was performed in two groups of transformed tobacco plants, one of which included plants with direct and inverted tandem uidA gene repeats in the T-DNA insertion. This insertion of inverted repeats was shown to reduce the level of stable nptII gene expression to 20%, as compared with 65% in the control transformants. The level of unstable expression of this gene substantially increased (up to 71.4% vs. 5.5% in the control group) when homologous sequences were brought together with direct tandem repeats in the genome of hybrid plants.