A disarmed Agrobacterium tumefaciens plant transformation system including the double-border, binary vector PV-ZMAP595 was used to transform LH59 embryos producing MON 87460.

The disarmed Agrobacterium tumefaciens transformation vector PV-ZMAP595 contains both left and right T-DNA border sequences facilitating the transformation. It was constructed using standard molecular biology techniques. The T-DNA region of this vector contains cspB and nptII expression cassettes and it is the portion that is integrated to maize genome during transformation event.

The genetic elements of PV-ZMAP595 intended for insertion into the maize genome comprised between the T-DNA borders are, from the right border region, promoter and leader from the rice actin gene (P-Ract1), a non-translated intron from the rice actin gene (I-Ract1), the cspB coding sequence (CS-cspB) and a polyadenylation sequence from the transcript 7 gene (T-tr7). These elements together constitute the cspB expression cassette which is followed by the nptII expression cassette. The latter is flanked by two loxP sites and constitutes of a transcriptional promoter (P-35S), the nptII coding sequence (CS-nptII), and a polyadenylation sequence from the nopaline synthase gene (T-nos).

MON 87460 contains one copy of the insert at a single insertion site hosting both cspB and nptII intact expression cassettes. No additional elements from the transformation vector PV-ZMAP595, linked or unlinked to the cspB and nptII expression cassettes, were detected in the genome of MON 87460. Additionally, backbone sequence from the plasmid PV-ZMAP595 was not detected.