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JXB Advance Access originally published online on August 21, 2009
Journal of Experimental Botany 2009 60(14):4129-4136; doi:10.1093/jxb/erp246
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© 2009 The Author(s).
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5/uk/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. This paper is available online free of all access charges (see http://jxb.oxfordjournals.org/open_access.html for further details)

RESEARCH PAPER

An inducible, modular system for spatio-temporal control of gene expression in stomatal guard cells

Tou Cheu Xiong1 * {dagger}, Cliona M. Hann1 {dagger}, John P. Chambers1 {dagger}, Marie Surget1 and Carl K.-Y. Ng1,{ddagger}

1School of Biology and Environmental Science, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland

{ddagger} To whom correspondence should be addressed: E-mail: carl.ng{at}ucd.ie

Stomata, flanked by pairs of guard cells, are small pores on the leaf surfaces of plants and they function to control gas exchange between plants and the atmosphere. Stomata will open when water is available to allow for the uptake of carbon dioxide for photosynthesis. During periods of drought, stomata will close to reduce desiccation stress. As such, optimal functioning of stomata will impact on water use efficiency by plants. The development of an inducible, modular system for robust and targeted gene expression in stomatal guard cells is reported here. It is shown that application of ethanol vapour to activate the gene expression system did not affect the ability of stomata to respond to ABA in bioassays to determine the promotion of stomatal closure and the inhibition of stomatal opening. The system that has been developed allows for robust spatio-temporal control of gene expression in all cells of the stomatal lineage, thereby enabling molecular engineering of stomatal function as well as studies on stomatal development.

Key words: Guard cells, inducible gene expression, modular system, spatio-temporal gene expression, stomata

* Present address: Biochimie et Physiologie Moléculaire des Plantes-Institut de Biologie Integrative des Plantes, UMR 0386 INRA/UMR 5004 CNRS/Montpellier SupAgro/Université Montpellier 2, Bat 7, 2 place Pierre Viala, F-34060 Montpellier Cedex 1, France.

{dagger} These authors contributed equally to this work.

Received 29 May 2009; Accepted 23 July 2009


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