Evaluation of Yield Components from Transgenic Soybean Overexpressing Chromatin Architecture-Controlling ATPG8 and ATPG10 Genes

AT-hook proteins are known to co-regulate transcription of genes through the modification of chromatin architecture. In plants, many genes encoding AT-hook proteins have been shown to be associated with increased seed yield or delayed senescence. In this study, we produced transgenic soybean plants overexpressing chromatin architecture-controlling ATPG8 and ATPG10 genes by Agrobacterium-mediated transformation and examined their agronomic traits to identify the yield increase in soybean crop similar to those seen in model plants, Arabidopsis. A total of 16 (3 of pB2GW7.0-ATPG8 and 13 of pCSEN-ATPG10 transformed) transgenic soybean plants were produced and their T1 seeds were harvested. Healthy and well-grown transgenic lines were selected (lines #1 and #2 from pB2GW7.0-ATPG8, and lines #8 and #9 from pCSEN-ATPG10), and the insertion and transcription level of genes were confirmed by PCR and RT-PCR with expected size. Investigation on agricultural traits confirms the increase in yield, plant height, the number of pods, and total seed weight with statistical significance when compared to wild-type soybean plants. The yield component study suggested that overexpression of ATPG8 and ATPG10 genes conferred positive effect on yield in transgenic soybean.