PROMOTORES SINTETICOS

Una secuencia de ADN del promotor vegetal sintético, la citada secuencia comprende: un motivo TATA; un sitio inicial de transcripción; una región entre dicho motivo TATA y dicho sitio inicial que es al menos 64% rico en GC; un elemento del extremo 5''; y una región de activación del extremo 5'', en donde dicha secuencia del promotor comprende una secuencia seleccionada del grupo que consiste de: a) una secuencia de nucleótidos publicada en la SEQ ID NO: 12, y b) una secuencia de nucleótidos que tiene al menos 90% de identidad con la secuencia a). Synthetic elements for enhancing expression of genes in plant cells are disclosed. These include a promoter with a "TATA to start" sequence containing 64 % or greater GC content and a synthetic upstream element incorporating several OCS binding motifs and novel flanking sequences. Upstream activating regions (UARs) are also disclosed that can further increase the constitutive transcriptional activity when they are operably linked to said promoter and/or the synthetic upstream element. In particular, the nucleotide sequence of the UAR of the maize Ubi-1 gene is provided and its use in expression cassettes and vectors containing these promoter elements. Cells and plants transformed with these vectors are further provided. These include a transgenic sunflower expressing an exogenous oxalate oxidase gene at a high level under the transcriptional control of a recombinant promoter having at least one upstream activating region of the 35S CaMV promoter.