Agrobacterium-mediated transformation using a floral-dip method can be successfully employed to create stable transgenic lines of the extremophyte model Schrenkiella parvula. We present a protocol modified from that for Arabidopsis thaliana, considering different growth habits and physiological characteristics of the extremophyte.
Schrenkiella parvula is an extremophyte adapted to various abiotic stresses, including multiple ion toxicity stresses. Despite high-quality genomic resources available to study how plants adapt to environmental stresses, its value as a functional genomics model and tool has been limited by the lack of a feasible transformation system. In this protocol, we report how to generate stable transgenic S. parvula lines using an Agrobacterium-mediated floral-dip method. We modified the transformation protocol used for A. thaliana to account for unique traits of S. parvula, such as an indeterminate flowering habit and a high epicuticular wax content on leaves. Briefly, S. parvula seeds were stratified at 4 °C for five days before planting. Plants were grown at a photoperiod of a 14 h light and 10 h dark and a 130 µmol m-2s-1 light intensity, at 22 °C to 24 °C. Eight to nine week-old plants with multiple inflorescences were selected for transformation. These inflorescences were dipped in an infiltration solution of Agrobacterium tumefaciens GV3101 carrying the pMP90RK plasmid. We performed two rounds of flower dipping with an interval of three to four weeks to increase the transformation efficiency. The T1 seeds were collected and dried for four weeks in a container with desiccants before germination to screen for candidate transformed lines. Resistance to BASTA was used to screen T1 plants. We sprayed the BASTA solution three times with an interval of three days starting at two week-old plants to reduce false positives. A BASTA drop test was performed on surviving individual plants to identify true positive transformants. The transformation efficiency was 0.033%, yielding 3–4 transgenic plants per 10,000 T1 seeds propagated.
In this protocol, we describe the growth and establishment of stable transgenic lines for the extremophyte model Schrenkiella parvula. The availability of an efficient transformation system is a hallmark of any versatile genetic model. Plants that thrive in extreme environments, referred to as extremophytes, provide a critical resource for understanding plant adaptations to environmental stresses. Schrenkiella parvula (formerly Thellungiella parvula and Eutrema parvulum) is one such extremophyte model, with expanding genomic resources1,2,3,4,5. However, transformation protocols have not yet been reported for S. parvula in published studies.
The genome of S. parvula is the first published extremophyte genome in Brassicaceae (mustard-cabbage family) and shows an extensive overall genome synteny with the non-extremophyte model, Arabidopsis thaliana1. Thus, comparative studies between A. thaliana and S. parvula could benefit from the wealth of genetic studies performed on A. thaliana to make informative hypotheses on how the S. parvula genome has evolved and regulated differently to cope with extreme environmental stresses5,6,7. S. parvula is one of the most salt-tolerant species (based on soil NaCl LD50) among known wild relatives of A. thaliana8. In addition to the NaCl tolerance, S. parvula survives and completes its life cycle in the presence of multiple salt ions at high concentrations toxic to most plants7. In response to the abiotic stresses prevalent in its natural habitat, it has evolved various traits, among which several have been studied at the biochemical or physiological level 8,9,10,11.
Since 2010, there have been over 400 peer-reveiwed publications that used S. parvula as a target species or used it in a comparison with other plant genomes. However, a clear bottleneck could be identified with a closer look of what type of studies have been conducted. The majority of these reports discuss the potential use of S. parvula in future studies or use it in comparative genomic or phylogenomic studies. Due to the lack of a proof-of-concept transformation protocol established for S. parvula, it has not been used in functional genomic studies, despite having one of the highest quality plant genomes available to date (>5 Mb contig N50) assembled and annotated into chromosome-level pseudomolecules1.
The Agrobacterium-mediated floral-dip transformation method has become the most broadly used method to create trasngenic lines in A. thaliana, and the development of a reproducible system of transformation was a critical factor in its success as a genetic model12,13. However, not all Brassicaceae species have been shown to be successfully transformed using the floral-dip method developed for A. thaliana. Specially, the Brassicaceae Lineage II species that include S. parvula has been recalcitrant to floral-dip based transformation methods14,15.
The indeterminate flowering growth habit of S. parvula, combined with its narrow leaf morphology has made it challenging to adopt the standard Agrobacterium-mediated floral-dip transformation method. In this study, we report the modified protocol we have developed for reproducible transformation of S. parvula.
1. Plant Growth
2. Cloning the Gene/Genomic Element of Interest into a Vector for Plant Transformation
3. Transforming the Vector Construct for Plant Transformation into Agrobacterium tumefaciens
4. Agrobacterium-mediated Transformation of S. parvula
5. Post-transformation Plant Care and the Second Transformation
6. Selection of Positive Transformants
We developed a transformation protocol that enables harvesting of T0 seeds within 150 days, using a floral-dip method modified from that for A. thaliana. Figure 1 shows a summary of the timeline and S. parvula plants that represent the optimal stage for executing the transformation through floral-dip. We selected S. parvula plants with 70 –80 flowers in multiple inflorescences at 60–80 days after germination as the target stage for transformation. A small number of pre-existing open or fertilized flowers and siliques at this stage were removed before the infiltration of A. tumefaciens by the floral-dip method. Infection with A. tumefaciens resulted in abortion of some flowers (Figure 2, bracket (a)). Siliques fully developed after the floral-dip are likely to contain transformed seeds (Figure 2, bracket (b)). Even after transformation, S. parvula continued to develop new inflorescences and flowers as long as the plants were kept healthy (Figure 2, white arrows). Due to this indeterminate flowering habit, a second round of transformation can be performed if the plant does not show signs of stress or senescence. Figure 2A and 2B show examples of S. parvula plants after the first and second round of transformation, respectively, 25 days apart from each other. In the second transformation, existing siliques should not be removed because they may contain transgenic seeds. Also, the A. tumefaciens can be applied by pipetting the infiltration solution (Table 1) onto newly emerging flower clusters, instead of dipping the entire shoot into the solution, to minimize the damage to siliques from the first transformation.
The transformation efficiency is 0.033%, yielding 3–4 transgenic plants per 10,000 T1 seeds propagated using the current protocol. This estimate is based on ~50,000 T1 seeds tested during ten independent transformation attempts. While the efficiency is lower than that of the Arabidopsis thaliana, it is comparable to the transformation of another extremophyte plant Eutrema salsugenium24 and some of the Arabidopsis thaliana ecotypes25. The transformation efficiency may be further optimized by using alternative Agrobacterium strains and modifications of surfactant and infiltration solutions. The multiple BASTA spray and drop tests (steps 6.3 and 6.4) will be critical to identify true positive transformants and reduce the number of samples tested using the PCR confirmation in step 6.5 (Figure 4A). Further confirmation of transformation can be checked with a reporter gene expression, if the cloned sequence includes a reporter gene (Figure 4B).
Figure 1: Timeline of S. parvula transformation. Please click here to view a larger version of this figure.
Figure 2: S. parvula plants after transformation by floral-dip. Plants were photographed 10 days after the first floral-dip at Day 60 (A) and 25 days after the second round of floral-dip at Day 85 (B). Infiltration with Agrobacterium may abort silique development of flowers as shown in brackets a. Siliques fully developed after floral-dip are likely to contain transformed seeds (brackets b). White arrows indicate flowers and inflorescences newly emerged after each transformation. Please click here to view a larger version of this figure.
Figure 3: Selection of S. parvula transformants based on BASTA resistance. (A) T1 seedlings before the BASTA spray. (B) Red circle indicates a candidate transformant surviving the first-round selection by the BASTA spray. (C) The second-round selection by BASTA drop test. An example of false positives (top panel) and true transgenic plants (lower panel) are shown. Please click here to view a larger version of this figure.
Figure 4: Confirmation of S. parvula transformation. (A) PCR amplification of bar gene from genomic DNAs extracted from S. parvula plants. Lane 1 and 13: size markers; Lane 2: negative control; Lane 3-5: wild-type S. parvula ; Lane 6-10: transgenic S. parvula candidates; Lane 11, 12: vector control. Lanes 7, 8, and 9 exemplify positive transformants. (B) Example of GUS reporter gene expression in a positive S. parvula transformant. Please click here to view a larger version of this figure.
Media / Solution | Reagent | Amount |
Luria-Bertani (LB) bacterial growth media | NaCl Tryptone Yeast Extract Agar (for plates) ddH2O |
10 g 10 g 5 g 20 g 955 mL |
Agrobacterium infiltration solution | MS salt (1/4x) B5 vitamins (1x) Sucrose (5%w/v) MES N6-benzylaminopurine (BA) Silwet L-77 (0.05%v/v) pH |
2.16 g 1 mL 50 g 0.5 g 10 µL 500 μL 5.7 |
Table 1: Composition of bacterial growth media and Agrobacterium infiltration solution.
The physiological state of the plant significantly influences the efficiency of transformation25. The use of healthy and vigorous plants for transformation is a key requirement for successful transformation in S. parvula. Water or light stressed plants will have fewer flowers compared to the healthy plants ideal for transformation (Figure 1, center panel). S. parvula can grow at a light intensity less than 130 µmol m-2 s-1, but the plants tend to be frailer; such plants would lead to more aborted flowers following floral-dip. S. parvula tends to abort Agrobacterium-dipped flowers at a higher rate than A. thaliana. Therefore, every step taken to minimize aborted flowers when dipped in the A. tumefaciens infiltration solution contributes to a higher transformation efficiency. We recommend a light period no longer than 14 h per day. Often, transformation of A. thaliana is performed on plants grown in a long-day condition (e.g. 18 h light and 6 h dark) or even under continuous light. However, we found such practices result in less resilient S. parvula plants and lead to a low transformation efficiency.
Flower buds are continuously produced on the inflorescence axes of S. parvula (Figure 2, white arrows). Therefore, allowing transformation of new flowers would significantly increase the chance of getting positive transformants. A second floral-dip (step 5.3) is not essential, but strongly suggested. However, this step is relatively time consuming compared to A. thaliana floral dipping, because S. parvula produces multiple inflorescence axes.
Wild-type S. parvula is sensitive to BASTA, although the initial screen for positive transformants with BASTA spray (step 6.3) will leave 5–8 surviving plants out of 100 seeds germinated (Figure 3A and 3B). Most of this (>80%) will be false positives. This is largely due to the narrow leaf shape and the leaf angle of S. parvula, which do not provide sufficient leaf surface in an appropriate orientation to retain the BASTA solution for a sufficient duration to observe a phenotype. Additionally, due to the high wax content of the adaxial leaf surface of S. parvula10, it tends to create a more impervious surface for BASTA. Therefore, the second screening for positive transformants using a BASTA drop on individual leaves (step 6.4, Figure 3C) is an essential step to avoid PCR testing on hundreds of false positives (step 6.5).
The current protocol was tested with the A. tumefaciens strain GV3101 carrying the pMP90RK plasmid. The efficiency of transformation may be improved with other A. tumefaciens strains, including strains ABI, LMG20, and C58C1 Rifr, with the pMP90 virulence plasmid reported to increase transformation efficiency in A. thaliana25. Brassica and Eutrema species are taxonomically more closely related to S. parvula compared to A. thaliana1. Therefore, the A. tumefaciens strain LBA4404 that was successfully used to transform Brassica napus and the strain EHA105 that has been used successfully to transform Eutrema salsugineum may offer a higher transformation efficiency than the reported efficiency of the strain currently used26,27,28.
Reducing the time and labor required by a transformation protocol is another significant factor in improving the transformation efficiency. Placing individual BASTA drops on leaves and monitoring the leaf for a week on multiple plants (step 6.4) are tedious. A future effort to increase the transformation efficiency could search for appropriate alternative selectable marker genes29.
The availability of an established transformation protocol will greatly advance our ability to identify genes and novel mechanisms that allow extremophyte model plants to survive multiple abiotic stresses2,4. Novel genetic variation in S. parvula will provide a broader pool of genetic variation that cannot be mined from the collective allelic variation identified as stress-responsive genes in the relatively stress-sensitive model, A. thaliana pan-genome5,6. Therefore, our floral-dip based A. tumefaciens mediated transformation protocol developed for S. parvula will fill a gap for the need for such tools to perform functional genomic experiments in an extremophyte model closely related to A. thaliana.
The authors have nothing to disclose.
This work was supported by a National Science Foundation award MCB 1616827.
Agar | VWR International, Radnor, PA | 90000-762 | Bacto Agar Soldifying Agent, BD Diagnostics |
B5 vitamins | Sigma-Aldrich, St. Louis, MO | G1019 | Gamborg’s Vitamin Solution |
Desiccant | W A Hammond Drierite, Xenia, OH | 22005 | Indicating DRIERITE 6 mesh |
Destination vector for plant transformation | TAIR | Vector:6531113857 | pKGWFS7 |
Electroporation cuvette | USA Scientific | 9104-5050 | Electroporation cuvette, round cap, 0.2 cm gap |
Electroporator | BIO-RAD Laboratories, Hercules, CA | 1652100 | MicroPulser Electroporator |
Fertilizer beads | Osmocote Garden, Marysville, OH | N/A | Osmocote Smart-Release Plant Food Flower & Vegetable |
Gel extraction kit | iNtRON Biotechnology, Boston, MA | 17289 | MEGAquick-spin Total fragment DNA purification kit |
Gentamicin | Sigma-Aldrich, St. Louis, MO | G1914-5G | Gentamicin sulfate |
Glufosinate-ammonium (11.3%) herbicide (BASTA) | Bayer environmental science, Montvale, NJ | N/A | FINALE herbicide |
Kanamycin | VWR International, Radnor, PA | 200004-444 | Kanamycin monosulfate |
MES | Bioworld, Dublin, OH | 41320024-2 | MES, Free Acid |
MS salt | MP Biomedicals, Santa Anna, CA | 092621822 | Hoagland's modified basal salt mixture |
N6-benzylaminopurine (BA) | Sigma-Aldrich, St. Louis, MO | B3274 | 6-Benzylaminopurine solution |
NaCl | Sigma-Alrich | S7653 | Sodium chloride |
Non-ionic detergent | Sigma-Aldrich, St. Louis, MO | 9005-64-5 | TWEEN 20 |
Plasmid isolation kit | Zymo Research, Irvine, CA | D4036 | Zyppy Plasmid Kits |
Recombinase enzyme mix kit | Life Technology | 11791-020 | Gateway LR Clonase II Enzyme mix |
Rifampicin | Sigma-Aldrich, St. Louis, MO | R3501-1G | Rifampicin, powder, >= 97% (HPLC) |
Shaking incubator | ThermoFisher Scientific, Waltham, MA | SHKE4450 | MaxQ 4450 Benchtop Orbital Shakers |
Soil mix | Sun Gro | SUN239223328CFLP | Sun Gro Metro-Mix 360 Grower Mix |
Spectinomycin | VWR International, Radnor, PA | IC15206705 | |
Sterile 50ml conical tubes | USA Scientific, Ocala, FL | 1500-1811 | 50 ml conical screw cap tubes, copolymer, racks, sterile |
Sucrose | VWR International, Radnor, PA | 57-50-1 | Sucrose, ACS |
Surfactant solution | Lehle seeds, Round Rock, TX | VIS-02 | Silwet L-77 |
Topoisomerase-based cloning kit | Life Technologies, Carlsbad, CA | K240020 | pENTR/D-TOPO Cloning Kit, with One Shot TOP10 Chemically Competent E. coli |
Tryptone | VWR International, Radnor, PA | 90000-282 | BD Bacto Tryptone, BD Biosciences |
Yeast Extract | VWR International, Radnor, PA | 90000-722 | BD Bacto Yeast Extract, BD Biosciences |