Strawberry fruit is highly appreciated worldwide for its organoleptic and healthy properties. However, this plant is attacked by many pathogenic fungi, which significantly affect fruit production and quality at pre- and post-harvest stages, making chemical applications the most effective but undesirable strategy to control diseases that has been found so far. Alternatively, genetic manipulation, employing plant key genes involved in defense, such as members of the NPR-like gene family, has been successful in many crops to improve resistance.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWRKY transcription factors play critical roles in plant growth and development or stress responses. Using up-to-date genomic data, a total of 64 and 257 WRKY genes have been identified in the diploid woodland strawberry, , and the more complex allo-octoploid commercial strawberry, × cv. Camarosa, respectively.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPlants (Basel)
December 2021
Under climate change, the spread of pests and pathogens into new environments has a dramatic effect on crop protection control. Strawberry ( spp.) is one the most profitable crops of the Rosaceae family worldwide, but more than 50 different genera of pathogens affect this species.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFStrawberry ( ×) is a major food crop worldwide, due to the flavor, aroma and health benefits of the fruit, but its productivity and quality are seriously limited by a large variety of phytopathogens, including spp. So far, key factors regulating strawberry immune response remain unknown. The gene has been previously proposed as an important element mediating defense responses in strawberry to .
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe plant VQ motif-containing proteins are a recently discovered class of plant regulatory proteins interacting with WRKY transcription factors capable of modulate their activity as transcriptional regulators. The short VQ motif (FxxhVQxhTG) is the main element in the WRKY-VQ interaction, whereas a newly identified variable upstream amino acid motif appears to be determinant for the WRKY specificity. The VQ family has been studied in several species and seems to play important roles in a variety of biological processes, including response to biotic and abiotic stresses.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe Chlamydomonas reinhardtii NIT2 gene plays a central role in nitrate assimilation, thus, nit2 mutants are not able to sense or to use nitrate for growth. NIT2 protein is an RWP-RK-type transcriptional factor related to nodule inception (Nin, NLP) proteins from plants. NIT2 expression is down-regulated in ammonium and up-regulated under nitrogen deprivation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe have isolated and characterized the Chlamydomonas reinhardtii genes for molybdenum cofactor biosynthesis, namely, CNX1G and CNX1E, and expressed them and their chimeric fusions in Chlamydomonas and Escherichia coli. In all cases, the wild-type phenotype was restored in individual mutants as well as in a CNX1G CNX1E double mutant. Therefore, CrCNX1E is the first eukaryotic protein able to complement an E.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe existence of mutants at specific steps in a pathway is a valuable tool of functional genomics in an organism. Heterologous integration occurring during transformation with a selectable marker in Chlamydomonas (Chlamydomonas reinhardtii) has been used to generate an ordered mutant library. A strain, having a chimeric construct (pNia1::arylsulfatase gene) as a sensor of the Nia1 gene promoter activity, was transformed with a plasmid bearing the paramomycin resistance AphVIII gene to generate insertional mutants defective at regulatory steps of the nitrate assimilation pathway.
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