Academia Sinica Logo

Agroinfiltration is a widely used technique in plant gene research, where bacteria are used to temporarily introduce foreign genes into plant leaves, enabling rapid functional analysis. Traditionally, Agrobacterium tumefaciens has been the bacterium of choice. Through a systematic screen, our recent study shows that a strain of Rhizobium rhizogenes, a relative of A. tumefaciens, delivers genes even more effectively.

This discovery offers a more efficient and versatile tool for gene function studies, especially in solanaceous crops like tomato and pepper, which are often challenging for transient expression. It holds promise for accelerating crop research and advancing sustainable agriculture.

This research was published on April 9, 2025, in Plant Biotechnology Journal. It was supported by the Grand Challenge Program of Academia Sinica and was a collaborative effort by the labs of Dr. Chih-Hang Wu, Dr. Erh-Min Lai, and Dr. Chih-Hong Kuo at the Institute of Plant and Microbial Biology. Co-first authors are TIGP students Juan Carlos Lopez-Agudelo and Foong-Jing Goh.