Patent ID: 8288610

Claim:
A method for producing a cell that contains heterologous nucleic acid, comprising introducing a satellite artificial chromosome (SATAC) into a plant cell, wherein: a SATAC is an artificial chromosome that contains more heterochromatin than euchromatin; the cell is a plant cell; and the SATAC that is introduced is prepared by a method, comprising: introducing a DNA fragment into a plant cell, wherein the DNA fragment comprises a selectable marker and a targeting sequence of nucleotides that comprises rDNA that targets the fragment to the pericentric heterochromatic region of a chromosome in the cell; growing the cell under selective conditions to produce cells that have incorporated the DNA fragment or a portion thereof that comprises the selectable marker into their genomic DNA in the pericentric heterochromatin of a chromosome in the cell, resulting in amplification of the region containing pericentric heterochromatin resulting in duplication of a centromere derived from the plant cell and producing a dicentric chromosome, which fragments and undergoes further amplification to produce a satellite artificial chromosome (SATAC); and identifying and selecting a cell that comprises a chromosome that contains the amplified pericentric heterochromatin and the DNA fragment or portion thereof comprising the selectable marker, wherein the chromosome is a satellite artificial chromosome (SATAC).