Two tobacco AP1-like gene promoters drive highly specific, tightly regulated and unique expression patterns during floral transition, initiation and development.

The genetic engineering of agronomic traits requires an array of highly specific and tightly regulated promoters that drive expression in floral tissues. In this study, we isolated and characterized two tobacco APETALA1-like (AP1-like) promoters (termed NtAP1La and NtAP1Lb1) in transgenic plants using the GUS reporter system, along with tissue-specific ablation analyses. Our results demonstrated that the two promoters are active in floral inflorescences but not in vegetative apical meristems or other vegetative tissues, as reflected by strong GUS staining and DT-A-mediated ablation of apical shoot tips during reproductive but not vegetative growth. We also showed that the NtAP1Lb1 promoter was more active than NtAP1La in inflorescences, as the former yielded higher frequencies and greater phenotypic evidence of tissue ablation compared to the latter. We further revealed that both promoters were uniformly expressed in the meristems of stage 1 and 2 floral buds, but were differentially expressed in floral organs later during development. While NtAP1La was found to be active in stage 4-5 carpels, later becoming confined to ovary tissue from stage 9 onwards, NtAP1Lb1 activity was apparent in all floral organs from stages 3 to 7, becoming completely absent in all floral organs from stage 11 onward. Therefore, it seems that the two tobacco promoters have acquired similar but distinct inflorescence-, floral meristem- and floral organ-specific and development-dependent regulatory features without any leaky activity in vegetative tissues. These features are novel and have rarely been observed in other flower-specific promoters characterized to date. The potential application of these promoters for engineering sterility, increasing biomass production and modifying flower architecture, as well as their putative use in flower-specific transgene excision, will be discussed.