Activity of the yeast FLP recombinase in Arabidopsis.

The coding sequence for FLP recombinase, originally from the 2 mu plasmid of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, was introduced into Arabidopsis behind the cauliflower mosaic virus 35S promoter. FLP activity was monitored by the glucuronidase activity resulting from inversion of an antisense-oriented GUS reporter gene flanked by a pair of FRT target sites in inverted repeat. FLP-dependent Gus activity was observed in both transient assays and transgenic plants. The FLP system will be useful for a variety of in planta genetic manipulations.