ABSTRACT
With the increase of transgenic research literature in medicinal plants, detection and inspection of transgenic elements in medicinal drugs have been highly concerned. The aim of this study was to provide an approach for the detection of transgenic elements in medicinal materials, so as to provide the effective strategy for the transgenic supervision of medicinal plants and Chinese medicinal materials. The literatures involving transgenic research on 48 medicinal plants was retrieved from the two databases of CNKI and SCI from April 1993 to May 2016, which was used to establish a database of commonly used expression elements in transgenic medicinal plants. Totally 281 papers including 230 Chinese literatures and 51 English literatures were obtained, of which 40.4% of Chinese and 54.9% of English literatures were the researches with aim to establish transformation system. The results showed that commonly used promoter included P-35S, P-Ubi, P-GPD, and P-act, with P-35S having the highest frequency of 68.7%. Common marker genes included NPTII, HPT, Gent, Bar, and aadA, with NPTII giving the highest frequency of 37.4%. Common reporter genes were GUS and GFP, with GUS of the highest frequency of 35.2%. Common terminator included T-NOS, T-35S, and T-OCS, with T-NOS of the highest frequency of 58%. The combination “P-35S + T-NOS + NPTII + GUS” increased the screening rate to 86.1% for screening the transgenic elements used in medicinal plants. On this basis, the adding of HPT, Bar and GFP with certain frequency of use contributed to the screening rate of 91.5% in searching for transgenic elements. T-DNA border sequence can be used for the transgenic detection in the studies using homologous or endogenous promoters, marker genes, and terminators.