Expression of Aequorea green fluorescent protein in plant cells.

The coding region of the green fluorescent protein (GFP) from Aequorea victoria has been fused to the cauliflower mosaic virus 35S promoter and introduced into maize leaf protoplasts. Transient expression of GFP was observed. In addition, the coding region of GFP was fused to an Arabidopsis heat shock promoter and co-transformed with another construct in which GFP has been replaced with chloramphenicol acetyltransferase (CAT). The heat-induced expression of GFP in maize protoplasts parallels that of CAT. While GFP was expressed in both dark-grown and green maize leaf protoplasts, no green fluorescence was observed in similarly transformed Arabidopsis protoplasts.