Construction of chimeric inducible promoters by elicitors of rice fungal blast pathogen and their expression in transgenic rice

The promoter fragments of wheat GstA1 and potato Gst1 have been amplified by PCR, cloned and fused respectively to the minimal promoter sequence of rice actin gene ( Act1 )) and its 5′ untranslated leader sequence together with GUS. The constructs with 2 chimeric promoters (WGA and PGA) have been transferred into rice in order to analyze their inducibility patterns in transgenic rice plants. The results show that: WGA and PGA are both inducible by elicitors of Pyricularia oryzae in transgenic rice cells; the intron I of rice Act1 gene is important for the heterogenic expression of monocot and dicot promoter elements in rice; and the Act1 minimal promoter and its 5′ untranslated leader sequence produced low level background expression in rice.