Cotton

Summary

Five different entities have patents and patent applications related to methods for transforming cotton with Agrobacterium.

Agracetus (now owned by Monsanto) has been granted two patents in the United States and one in Europe, directed to transformation of immature cotton plants with A. tumefaciens. The Agracetus patents have the earliest priority date in the group of cotton transformation patents, dating back to 1986. The major aspects of the inventions are:

• hypocotyl cotton tissue is selected for transformation;
• at least two sequences including a foreign chimeric gene and a resistance gene are introduced into plants. The product of the foreign gene is, in one of the United States patents, either a foreign protein or a negative RNA stand; and
• completely transformed plants are regenerated.

Calgene (also owned by Monsanto) has one United States patent related to this topic and recently a European and an Australian patent have also been granted. In both Agracetus' and Calgene's inventions hypocotyl cotton tissue is transformed with Agrobacterium. However, in contrast to Agracetus' inventions, Calgene claims any exogenous gene and Agrobacterium species. Other distinctive features of the invention by Calgene include the use of a cotton seedling grown in the dark as source material for the tissue to be transformed and the induction of embryogenic callus formation in a hormone-free medium.

Differing from those discussed above, Cotton Inc. and The Institute of Molecular Agrobiology (SG) disclose in their patent applications the use of meristematic cells of apical shoot tips of cotton, and cotton petiole and root callus, respectively, as tissues to be transformed with Agrobacterium.

Aventis CropScience (now Bayer Crop Science) and Bayer BioScience patents and applications disclose the use of cotton embryogenic callus as target tissue for transformation with Agrobacterium. The addition of a plant phenolic compound prior or during the transformation of the cotton tissue for vir gene induction constitutes a disclosed improvement of cotton transformation methodology. This group has the most recent priority date (19 May 1999) among the cotton transformation patents.

The information contained in this page was believed to be correct at the time it was collated. New patents and patent applications, altered status of patents, and case law may have resulted in changes in the landscape. CAMBIA makes no warranty that it is correct or up to date at this time and accepts no liability for any use that might be made of it. Corrections or updates to the information are welcome. Please send an email to info@bios.net.

CAMBIA Login