Tissue-specific expression in transgenic rice and Arabidopsis thaliana plants of GUS gene driven by the 5′ regulatory sequences of an anther specific rice gene YY2

The identification and characterization of promoters, cis-elements and transcription factors are critical for studying gene expression during growth and development in any organism. Use of specific promoters is an absolute requirement for the expression of foreign genes in plants in a developmentally, spatially and/or temporally regulated manner. The YY2 cDNA has been shown to be expressed specifically in the tapetum cells of rice anther. In this study, a 968 bp upstream regulatory sequence (GenBank accession no. FJ957881) of the gene was isolated using genome walking method. The isolated fragment was shown to drive anther-specific expression of GUS reporter gene in rice as well as in the dicot plant Arabidopsis thaliana. Deletion analysis revealed that a ∼400 bp 5′ regulatory region is sufficient to confer anther-specific expression of GUS gene.