An objective of the present invention is to provide promoters having
seed-specific promoter activity, and methods of expressing foreign
proteins in seeds. In particular, a seed specific promoter from the rice
glutelin GluB-4 gene is disclosed. 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.