Patent ID: 8237017

Claim:
A method of producing a plant tolerant to high light stress, comprising the steps of: (a) transforming plant cells with a chimeric gene to create transgenic plant cells, said chimeric gene comprising in sequence the following operably linked DNA fragments: (i) a plant-expressible promoter; (ii) a DNA region encoding a synthetic miRNA precursor consisting of the nucleotide sequence as set forth in SEQ ID NO: 42; and (iii) a 3′ end region involved in transcription termination and polyadenylation; (b) regenerating a population of transgenic plant lines from said transgenic plant cells, wherein said chimeric gene is transcribed to yield PARP2 inhibitory miRNA from said synthetic miRNA precursor; and (c) identifying a plant line within said population of transgenic plant lines, which is tolerant to high light stress conditions as compared to a plant of the same species that does not comprise said chimeric gene.