Inheritance of functional foreign genes in plants.
Morphologically normal plants were regenerated from Nicotiana plumbaginifolia cells transformed with an Agrobacterium tumefaciens strain containing a tumor-inducing plasmid with a chimeric gene for kanamycin resistance. The presence of the chimeric gene in regenerated plants was demonstrated by Southern hybridization analysis, and its expression in plant tissues was confirmed by the ability of leaf segments to form callus on media containing kanamycin at concentrations that were normally inhibitory. Progeny derived from several transformed plants inherited the foreign gene in a Mendelian manner.