Inhibition of cell respiration and prodn. of male sterile plants

摘要

A method of inhibiting gene expression in a target plant tissue which comprises stably transforming a plant cell of a type from which a whole plant may be regenerated with a gene construct carrying a tissue-specific or a development-specific promoter which operates in the cells of the target plant tissue and a disrupter gene encoding a protein which is capable, when expressed, of inhibiting respiration in the cells of the said target tissue resulting in death of the cells, the said disrupter gene is selected from the group consisting of the T-urfl3 gene, genes encoding an alpha - or beta -tubulin, short sense co-suppression of two essential maize cell cycle genes, cdc25 and replication origin activator (ROA) and a short sense construct to the adenine nucleotide translocator (ANT) of the inner mitochondrial membrane.