Alien gene manipulation and expression in wheat

Of the several transformation systems available for plants, only one has proven successful with wheat: alien integration via wide crossing. With the aid of special genetic stocks, alien chromosomes, chromosome arms, or even small segments, have been substituted into wheat. However, the insertion of deleterious genes linked to desirable genes has occurred, and difficulties have been observed in obtaining expression of the inserted alien genes. It is likely that any newly developed transformation system(s) will also experience similar problems. Therefore, research has been expanded into studying the issues associated with transformation. Procedures have been developed that indicate not only the presence of alien genes, but also their physical location. Techniques are also available for analyzing the levels of alien gene expression in wheat.Key words: wheat, aneuploidy, restriction fragment length polymorphism.