An objective of the present invention is to provide promoters having
seed-specific promoter activity, and methods of expressing foreign
proteins in seeds. The present inventors isolated the promoters of a
number of genes that are expressed in rice seeds, constructed binary
vectors in which each promoter is inserted upstream of the GUS reporter
gene, and transformed rice using the Agrobacterium method. The inventors
then used GUS expression level as an index to examine the site of
expression, the expression pattern during seed maturation, and the level
of expression in seeds for each promoter. They thus discovered promoters
with activity specific to a particular site in seeds, and with higher
activity than constitutive promoters and known seed-specific promoters.
