Improving Methionine Content in Transgenic Forage Legumes

Leguminous forage crops are high in proteins but deficient in S- amino acids. It has been shown that both wool quality and milk production can be limited by the post-ruminal supply of sulfur-containing amino acids. Efforts to use conventional plant breeding and cell selection techniques to increase the S-amino acid content of alfalfa have met with little success. With the objective to increase the S-amino acid content of forage legumes, the goal of this project was to co- express the methionine rich zein genes from corn along with a gene for a key enzyme in methionine biosynthesis, aspartate kinase(AK). The zeins are seed storage proteins from corn and are groupec into four distinct classes based on their amino acid sequence homologies. The b-zein (15kd) and the 6zein (10kD and 18kD) have proportionately high levels of methionine (10%, 22% and 28%, respectively). Initial studies from our lab had shown that while the 15kD zein accumulated to high levels in vegetative tissues of transgenic tobacco the l0kD zein did not. However, co-expression of the 10kD zein with the 15kD zein genes in tobacco showed stabilization of the 10kD zein and the co-localization of the 10kD and 15kD zein proteins in unique ER derived protein bodies. AK is the key enzyme for producing carbon skeletons for all amino acids of the aspartate family including methionine. It is, however, regulated by end-product feedback inhibition. The specific objectives of this proposal were: i. to co-express the 15kD zein with the 10/18kD zein genes in alfalfa in order to enhance the level of accumulation of the 10/18kD zein; ii. to increase methionine pools by expressing a feedback insensitive AK gene in transformants co-expressing the 15kD and 10/18kD zein genes. The Israeli partners were successful in expressing the AK gene in alfalfa which resulted in an increase in free and bound threonine but not in methionine (Galili et al., 2000). Since our target was to increase methionine pools, we changed our second objective to replace the AK gene with the gene for cystathionine gamma synthase (CGS) in the co-expression studies. The first methionine specific reaction is catalyzed by CGS. An additional objective was to develop a transformation system for Berseem clover, and to introduce the appropriate gene constructs into it with the goal of improving their methionine content. Genes for the 15kD zein along with the genes for either the 10kD or 18kD zein have been introduced into the same alfalfa plant both by sexual crosses and by re-transformation. Analysis of these zein co-expressors have shown that both the IOkD and 18kD zein levels go up 5 to 10 fold when co-expressed with the 15kD zein (Bagga et al., MS in preparation). Incubation of the leaves of transgenic alfalfa co-expressing the 15kD and 10kD zein genes, in the rumen of cows have shown that the zein proteins are stable in the rumen. To increase the level of zein accumulation in transgenic alfalfa different promoters have been used to drive the zein genes in alfalfa and we have concluded that the CaMV 35S promoter is superior to the other strong leaf -specific promoters. By feeding callus tissue of alfalfa plants co-expressing the 15kD and 10kD zein genes with methionine and its precursors, we have shown that the zein levels could be significantly enhanced by increasing the methionine pools. We have now introduced the CGS gene (from Arabidopsis; kindly provided to us by Dr. Leustek), into the 15kD zein transformants and experiments are in progress to check if the expression of the CGS gene indeed increases the level of zein accumulation in alfalfa. We were not successful in developing a transformation protocol for Berseem clover.