CAMBIA:Research

Transbacter

TransBacter is a new method of gene transfer for plants - or indeed any eukaryotic organism - using bacterial species outside the genus Agrobacterium. TransBacter is designed to be a work-around to the many patents covering Agrobacterium transformation and thus aims to overcome the current IP restrictions to the commercialization of products created using bacteria-mediated gene transformation in plants.

GUSPlus™

GUSPlus™ is a new reporter gene for use in molecular biology. There are GUSPlus vectors for checking transformations and screening transformants, and special vectors for use with TransBacter strains. The GUSPlus gene was originally isolated from Staphylococcus sp. but has been extensively altered by codon optimisation for expression in plants. It is described in Nature 433:629ff and in patents and patent applications including US patents 6,391,547, 6,641,996, 7,087,420 and 7,141,719. Issued in Australia as Patent Number 760275. Issued in New Zealand as Patent Number 1485. Published as WO 00/055333 and WO 99/13085 and pending in Brazil, Canada, Europe and Israel.

Transactivators

In transactivation, upstream activation sequences (UAS) are inserted into plants separately from the transcriptional activators which regulate them. This enables the transcriptional activators to create changes in gene regulation by either inducing or suppressing the expression of certain genes even though they are not linked to the promoters of these genes.