Patent ID: 7737327

Claim:
A high throughput screening method for identifying plant cells that are the source of compounds that interact with a mammalian estrogen receptor ligand binding domain comprising, (1) transforming an Arabidopsis or Nicotiana tabacum plant with a vector having an estrogen receptor system comprising a constitutive promoter operably linked to a nucleotide sequence encoding a trimeric transcription factor comprising as operatively linked components a mammalian estrogen receptor ligand binding domain, a transcription factor DNA binding domain and a transactivating transcriptional activator domain; and a gene encoding a visible marker operably linked to a transcription activator sequence and a promoter, to obtain a transgenic plant; (2) isolating protoplasts from the transgenic plant of step 1 that express the estrogen receptor system and the gene encoding the visible marker; (3) mutagenizing the protoplasts of step 2 via T-DNA tagging mutagenesis to form mutagenized protoplasts; (4) culturing the mutagenized protoplasts of step 3 into microcalli; and (5) selecting microcalli of step 4 that overexpress the visible marker gene in comparison to a control transgenic microcallus.