Agrobacterium-mediated DNA delivery into fish cells

Abstract

In nature, plant pathogen Agrobacterium tumefaciens causes tumor formation on various dicotyledonous and some monocotyledonous plant species by transferring a specific segment of DNA (T-DNA) from the tumour-inducing (Ti) plasmid within itself into plant cells and integrated the DNA into plant genome. Recently, it has been demonstrated that Agrobacterium can also transfer DNA into other organisms such as yeast, fungi and even human cells. Here, we tried to apply this transformation system to a fish cell line EPC; we found that Agrobacterium can deliver its T-DNA into fish cells. This was shown by different techniques including EGFP expression, RT-PCR and flow cytometry. We also observed that some vir gene mutants, which cannot infect plant cells, could deliver DNA into fish cells. This suggests that Agrobacteriuma??mediated DNA delivery into fish cells occurred in a mechanism different from the Agrobacteriuma??mediated transformation of plants, yeast and fungi.