A monocot pollen-specific promoter contains separable pollen-specific and quantitative elements.

The region of the promoter of the pollen-specific maize gene, ZM13, from -119 to -37 was analyzed by a linker-scanning type of substitution mutagenesis and two areas were shown to be responsible for pollen expression: a proximal region delineated by mutations from -84 to -53 that conferred pollen specificity, and an upstream region delineated by a mutation from -107 to -102 (Q-element) that could increase the expression of the proximal region but showed no ability to cause expression in pollen on its own. Replacement of both of these areas with other sequences including the CaMV 35S promoter failed to replace activity.