Transcriptome analysis of smooth cordgrass (Spartina alterniflora Loisel), a monocot halophyte, reveals candidate genes involved in its adaptation to salinity.

Background: Soil salinity affects growth and yield of crop plants. Plants respond to salinity by physiological and biochemical adjustments through a coordinated regulation and expression of a cascade of genes. Recently, halophytes have attracted attention of the biologists to understand their salt adaptation mechanisms.

Genome-Wide Transcriptome Analysis of Cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.) Identifies Candidate Gene Signatures in Response to Aflatoxin Producing Fungus Aspergillus flavus.

Aflatoxins are toxic and potent carcinogenic metabolites produced from the fungi Aspergillus flavus and A. parasiticus. Aflatoxins can contaminate cottonseed under conducive preharvest and postharvest conditions.

Arabidopsis plants constitutively overexpressing a myo-inositol 1-phosphate synthase gene (SaINO1) from the halophyte smooth cordgrass exhibits enhanced level of tolerance to salt stress.

Salinity is one of the most important environmental constraints limiting agricultural productivity. Considering the importance of the accumulation of osmolytes, myo-inositol in particular, in halophytic plant's adaptive response to salinity, an effort was made to overexpress the SaINO1 gene from the grass halophyte Spartina alterniflora encoding myo-inositol 1-phosphate synthase (MIPS) in Arabidopsis thaliana. We demonstrated that SaINO1 is a stress-responsive gene and its constitutive over expression in Arabidopsis provides significantly improved tolerance to salt stress during germination and seedling growth and development.

Differential expression of the transcripts of Spartina alterniflora Loisel (smooth cordgrass) induced in response to petroleum hydrocarbon.

Petroleum hydrocarbons (PHC) in soil are potentially toxic to plants and exert negative effect on the environment and human health. To understand the effect of PHC on the gene expression profile of a wetland plant Spartina alterniflora in the coastal Louisiana, plants were subject up to 40% PHC under greenhouse conditions. The plants exposed to PHC showed 21% reduction of leaf total chlorophyll after 2 weeks of stress.

Selectable marker elimination in the T0 generation by Agrobacterium-mediated co-transformation involving Mungbean yellow mosaic virus TrAP as a non-conditional negative selectable marker and bar for transient positive selection.

Transient selection involving the bar gene and non-conditional negative selection against stable T-DNA integration through the use of the Mungbean yellow mosaic virus (MYMV) transcriptional activator protein gene (TrAP) were used in a novel co-transformation strategy to generate selectable marker gene (SMG)-eliminated transgenic tobacco plants in the T(0) generation itself. Two compatible binary plasmids, pCam-bar-TrAP-gus harbouring bar as an SMG and the MYMV TrAP gene as a non-conditional negative selectable marker, and pGA472 with the nptII gene as an unselected experimental gene of interest (GOI) were placed in the Agrobacterium tumefaciens strain EHA105 and used for co-transformation. Transient selection with 5 mg l(-1) phosphinothricin (PPT) for 2-4 weeks and subsequent establishment in a PPT-minus medium yielded 114 plants from 200 leaf discs.