Created in 1985 in the laboratory of Mary-Dell Chilton at Washington University in St. Louis, it was named after the graduate student who constructed it.
[1][2] This strain is used for moving genes of interest into many hundreds of species of plants all over the world.
For recalcitrant crops such as maize, wheat, and rice, the EHA helper strains are often employed for gene transfer.
[3][4][5] These strains are efficient at promoting T-DNA transfer because of the hypervirulence of the vir genes[2] suggesting that a higher success rate can be achieved on these "hard to transform" crops or cultivars.
The npt I gene in place of the T-DNA in EHA101 requires that binary plasmids that are put into the strain encode a drug resistance other than kanamycin.