High efficiency Agrobacterium rhizogenes-mediated transformation of Saponaria vaccaria L. (Caryophyllaceae) using fluorescence selection.

A highly efficient and convenient method for the Agrobacterium rhizogenes-dependent production of transformed roots of Saponaria vaccaria L. (Caryophyllaceae) is described. The parameters tested and optimized include S.

Gene transcript and metabolite profiling of elicitor-induced opium poppy cell cultures reveals the coordinate regulation of primary and secondary metabolism.

Elicitor-induced sanguinarine accumulation in opium poppy (Papaver somniferum) cell cultures provides a responsive model system to profile modulations in gene transcripts and metabolites related to alkaloid biosynthesis. An annotated expressed sequence tag (EST) database was assembled from 10,224 random clones isolated from an elicitor-treated opium poppy cell culture cDNA library. The most abundant ESTs encoded defense proteins, and enzymes involved in alkaloid metabolism and S-adenosylmethionine-dependent methyl transfer.

Functional genomic analysis of alkaloid biosynthesis in Hyoscyamus niger reveals a cytochrome P450 involved in littorine rearrangement.

Tropane alkaloids are valuable pharmaceutical drugs derived from solanaceous plants such as Hyoscyamus niger (black henbane). The biosynthesis of these molecules, including the nature of the enigmatic rearrangement of (R)-littorine to (S)-hyoscyamine, is not completely understood. To test the hypothesis that a cytochrome P450 enzyme is involved in this rearrangement, we used virus-induced gene silencing to silence a cytochrome P450, CYP80F1, identified from H.