Development of male sterile transgenic lines in rice by tapetum specific expression of barnase gene

The key to development of barnase-barstar transgene based hybrid seed technology is the availability of tightly regulated tapetum specific promoter, as any leaky expression of the barnase gene leads to several unintended effects. In the present study, we used two different tapetum specific promoters i.e. promoter of the RTS gene isolated from rice cultivar IR64 and the OsG6b promoter from japonica rice cultivar Hayayuki to express the barnase gene in rice transgenic lines. While viable male sterile transgenic lines could not be obtained with RTS promoter we could develop single copy male sterile lines when the barnase gene was expressed under the OsG6b promoter.