Deoxynivalenol (DON) is a mycotoxin virulence factor that promotes growth of the fungus in wheat floral tissues. To further our understanding of the effects of DON exposure on plant cell function, we characterized DON-induced transcriptional changes in wheat spikelets. Four hundred wheat genes were differentially expressed during infection with wild-type as compared with a mutant strain that is unable to produce DON.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Targeted genome editing using the Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR)/Cas9 system has been applied in a large number of plant species. Using a gene-specific single guide RNA (sgRNA) and the CRISPR/Cas9 system, small editing events such as deletions of few bases can be obtained. However larger deletions are required for some applications.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAntofine, a phenanthroindolizidine alkaloid, is a bioactive natural product isolated from milkweeds that exhibits numerous biological activities, including anticancer, antimicrobial, antiviral, and anti-inflammatory properties. However, the direct targets and mode of action of antofine have not been determined. In this report, we show that antofine displays antifungal properties against the phytopathogen , the cause of head blight disease (FHB).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTo improve soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merrill] seed nutritional quality, a synthetic gene, MB-16 was introduced into the soybean genome to boost seed methionine content. MB-16, an 11 kDa de novo protein enriched in the essential amino acids (EAAs) methionine, threonine, lysine and leucine, was originally developed for expression in rumen bacteria.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHighbush blueberry (Vaccinium corymbosum) fruits contain substantial quantities of flavonoids, which are implicated in a wide range of health benefits. Although the flavonoid constituents of ripe blueberries are known, the molecular genetics underlying their biosynthesis, localization, and changes that occur during development have not been investigated. Two expressed sequence tag libraries from ripening blueberry fruit were constructed as a resource for gene identification and quantitative real-time reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction primer design.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLate embryogenesis abundant (LEA) proteins are intrinsically disordered proteins that accumulate in organisms during the development of dehydration stress tolerance and cold acclimation. Group 3 LEA proteins have been implicated in the prevention of cellular protein denaturation and membrane damage during desiccation and anhydrobiosis. We tested the ability of LEA proteins to facilitate recombinant expression of recalcitrant and intrinsic membrane proteins.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe evaluated the effect of the T4 bacteriophage gene 32 protein (T4gp32) on in vitro transcription and reverse transcription. T4gp32 doubled the yield of in vitro transcripts obtained with T7 RNA polymerase and increased the yield of cDNA synthesis when used in combination with an RNaseH-deficient Moloney murine leukemia virus [Au: ok] reverse transcriptase. The positive effect could be correlated with the RNA chaperone activity of T4gp32.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe have developed a repressible seed-lethal (SL) system aimed at reducing the probability of transgene introgression into a population of sexually compatible plants. To evaluate the potential of this method, tobacco plants were transformed with an SL construct comprising gene 1 and gene 2 from Agrobacterium tumefaciens whereby gene 1 was controlled by the seed-specific phaseolin promoter modified to contain a binding site for the Escherichia coli TET repressor (R). The expression of this construct allows normal plant and seed development but inhibits seed germination.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInsect Biochem Mol Biol
March 2002
A novel DNase from the digestive tract of the spruce budworm (Choristoneura fumiferana) has been isolated and characterized. This DNase has two features that distinguish it from other known DNases: (1) it has a pH optimum of 10.5 to 11; (2) it plays an important role in the conversion of the insecticidal crystal protein from Bacillus thuringiensis to the active DNA-free toxin in the larval gut.
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