Abstract Most of the well-characterized promoters that are currently available confer constitutive expression in genetic engineering, however, this expression model may cause plant growth retardation and other problems, so cloning novel tissue-speci?c promoter is needed. Based on microarray data, we identified a rice green-tissue specific expression gene (TIGR Locus: LOC_Os06g21110), a promoter named green-tissue specific promoter(GSP) with 1 951 bp in length of the gene was cloned by PCR from the genomic DNA of rice Minghui 63(O. sativa L ssp. indica). Promoter GSP was further fused with β-glucuronidas (gus) reporter gene and transformed into rice Zhonghua 11(Oryza sativa L ssp. japonica) callus of mature seed through Agrobacterium-mediated transformation. The expression pattern of GSP was identified in transgenic rice plants by histochemical staining. The result verified that GSP was a sheath and leaf specific expression promoter. Then 5' end different length deletions of GSP were fused with gus gene and were transformed into rice respectively. The result of deletion analyses indicated that 592 bp length promoter fragment was sufficient for maintain the sheath and leaf specific expression model, and also identified core functional areas of GSP preliminarily. GSP is a sheath and leaf specific promoter which has not been reported, utilizing tissue specific promoters like GSP will subject to rice improvement and limit the potential of unintended impacts on plant physiology, so it has a good application value in transgenic rice.
