Discovery of the Agrobacterium growth inhibition sequence in virus and its application to recombinant clone screening.

Infectious clone vectors used widely in genetic research. While constructing soybean mosaic virus (SMV) clone vectors, we found that transformed Agrobacterium grew significantly different depending on the viral strains used. In particular, the clone vectors constructed with SMV SC15 significantly suppressed the growth of Agrobacterium. Recombinant and truncated virus vector experiments showed that the polymorphism of a P1 protein coding sequence of SC15 leads to the growth inhibition of Agrobacterium. But the lack of other protein encoding sequences, except for the sequence encoding coat protein, should reduce the ability of SC15 to suppress Agrobacterium growth. A vector (pCB301-attL-SC15P) compatible with the Gateway cloning system was constructed using this Agrobacterium inhibitory sequence. The results from the LR recombination reaction with pCB301-attL-SC15P and Agrobacterium transformation showed the valuable application potential of the Agrobacterium inhibitory sequence to serve as a negative screening factor for effective recombinant clone screening in Agrobacterium.