Appeal No. 2003-0936
Application No. 09/532,806
Transient expression assays in microparticle
bombarded maize suspension cells and in excised maize
root and leaf tissue were carried out in order to
determine the activity of the ZMGRP promoter. The
promoter was shown to be functionally active in
conjunction with a modified actin 2 (Act2) intron 1.
Furthermore, the ZMGRP promoter - Act2 intron combination
yielded transient expression levels that were at least
70% the level observed from the rice actin 1 (Act1)
promoter - intron combination (Zhang, W., McElroy, D.,
Wu, R., 1991). Finally, the ZMGRP promoter - intron - gus
construct was shown to express high levels of GUS protein
in the leaves, stems and meristematic regions of the
roots of RO maize plants regenerated from transformed
maize callus.
Accordingly, appellants argue that the broad teachings of the
specification and claims are supported by a number of specific
examples of isolated DNA comprising at least 95 contiguous bases of
SEQ ID NO:1 which comprise a functional maize GRP promoter. We
examine those examples below.
Example 1 teaches that the inventors serendipitously isolated
the ZMGRP promoter “from a maize B73 size-selected lambda genomic
DNA (gDNA) library while attempting to isolate a second maize
promoter, designated A3” (Spec., p. 111). Example 1 reports
(Spec., p. 112):
The analysis revealed that the restriction map and
hybridization pattern of the putative clone was highly
similar to, but not identical to, the expected A3
pattern. Partial sequencing of the clone revealed that
the 5' sequence was highly homologous, but not identical
to that of the A3 5' region. A GenBank search revealed
that the 4000 base pair cloned sequence shared homology in
18
Page: Previous 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007