Transcriptional and metabolic signatures of Arabidopsis responses to chewing damage by an insect herbivore and bacterial infection and the consequences of their interaction.

Plants use multiple interacting signaling systems to identify and respond to biotic stresses. Although it is often assumed that there is specificity in signaling responses to specific pests, this is rarely examined outside of the gene-for-gene relationships of plant-pathogen interactions. In this study, we first compared early events in gene expression and later events in metabolite profiles of Arabidopsis thaliana following attack by either the caterpillar Spodoptera exigua or avirulent (DC3000 avrRpm1) Pseudomonas syringae pv.

Grassland root communities: species distributions and how they are linked to aboveground abundance.

There is little comprehensive information on the distribution of root systems among coexisting species, despite the expected importance of those distributions in determining the composition and diversity of plant communities. This gap in knowledge is particularly acute for grasslands, which possess large numbers of species with morphologically indistinguishable roots. In this study we adapted a molecular method, fluorescent fragment length polymorphism, to identify root fragments and determine species root distributions in two grasslands in Yellowstone National Park (YNP).

Arabidopsis GH3-LIKE DEFENSE GENE 1 is required for accumulation of salicylic acid, activation of defense responses and resistance to Pseudomonas syringae.

In Arabidopsis, the GH3-like gene family consists of 19 members, several of which have been shown to adenylate the plant hormones jasmonic acid, indole acetic acid and salicylic acid (SA). In some cases, this adenylation has been shown to catalyze hormone conjugation to amino acids. Here we report molecular characterization of the GH3-LIKE DEFENSE GENE 1 (GDG1), a member of the GH3-like gene family, and show that GDG1 is an important component of SA-mediated defense against the bacterial pathogen Pseudomonas syringae.

Overexpression of CRK13, an Arabidopsis cysteine-rich receptor-like kinase, results in enhanced resistance to Pseudomonas syringae.

Protein kinases play important roles in relaying information from perception of a signal to the effector genes in all organisms. Cysteine-rich receptor-like kinases (CRKs) constitute a sub-family of plant receptor-like kinases (RLKs) with more than 40 members that contain the novel C-X8-C-X2-C motif (DUF26) in the extracellular domains. Here we report molecular characterization of one member of this gene family, CRK13.

Light-dependent hypersensitive response and resistance signaling against Turnip Crinkle Virus in Arabidopsis.

Resistance to Turnip Crinkle Virus (TCV) in Arabidopsis ecotype Dijon (Di)-17 is conferred by the resistance gene HRT and a recessive locus rrt. In Di-17, TCV elicits a hypersensitive response (HR), which is accompanied by increased expression of pathogenesis-related (PR) genes and high levels of salicylic acid (SA). We have previously shown that HRT-mediated resistance to TCV is dependent on SA-mediated signal transduction and that increased levels of SA confer enhanced resistance to TCV via upregulation of the HRT gene.

Resources for targeted insertional and deletional mutagenesis in Arabidopsis.

The maize transposons Activator (Ac) and Dissociation (Ds) are active in many monocots and dicots, including Arabidopsis. We describe a new Ac-derived transposon construct, designated the Ds-loxP T-DNA, which can be used for both insertional and deletional mutagenesis. There are loxP sites in both orientations on both the transposon and the donor site T-DNA and an arrangement of marker genes that permits selection of transposition events, as well as deletions and inversions extending from the donor site to a transposon reinserted on either side of it.

A collection of sequenced and mapped Ds transposon insertion sites in Arabidopsis thaliana.

Insertional mutagenesis is a powerful tool for generating knockout mutations that facilitate associating biological functions with as yet uncharacterized open reading frames (ORFs) identified by genomic sequencing or represented in EST databases. We have generated a collection of Dissociation (Ds) transposon lines with insertions on all 5 Arabidopsis chromosomes. Here we report the insertion sites in 260 independent single-transposon lines, derived from four different Ds donor sites.

Hybridization and enzymatic extension of au nanoparticle-bound oligonucleotides.

We have investigated the impact of steric effects on the hybridization and enzymatic extension of oligonucleotides bound to 12-nm colloidal Au particles. In these experiments, a nanoparticle-bound 12-mer sequence is hybridized either to its solution phase 12-mer complement or to an 88-mer template sequence. The particle-bound oligonucleotide serves as a primer for enzymatic extension reactions, in which covalent incorporation of nucleotides to form the complement of the template is achieved by the action of DNA polymerase.