Cervical cancer is linked to infection with human papillomaviruses (HPV) and is the third most common cancer among women worldwide. There is a strong demand for the development of an HPV preventive vaccine. Transgenic plants expressing the HPV major capsid protein L1 could be a system to produce virus-like particles for prophylactic vaccination or could even be used as edible vaccines to induce...

To study the role of ethylene in plant reproduction, we constructed transgenic tobacco plants in which the expression of a pistil-specific gene coding for the ethylene-forming enzyme 1-aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylate oxidase was inhibited. Flowers from transgenic plants showed female sterility due to an arrest in ovule development. Megasporogenesis did not occur, and ovules did not reach maturi...

Insect kinins were shown to have diuretic activity, inhibit weight gain, and have antifeedant activity in insects. In order to study the potential of the TAT-fusion approach to deliver diuretic peptides per os to pest insects, the HezK I peptide from Helicoverpa zea, as a representative of the kinin family, was selected. The fusion gene TAT-HezK I was designed and was used to transform tobacco ...

Overproduction of auxin in transgenic plants also results in the overproduction of ethylene. Plants overproducing both auxin and ethylene display inhibition of stem elongation and growth, increased apical dominance, and leaf epinasty. To determine the relative roles of auxin and ethylene in these processes, transgenic tobacco and Arabidopsis plants expressing the auxin-overproducing tryptophan ...

The DREB (dehydration-responsive element binding)-type transcription factors are classified into six subgroups, named A-1 to A-6. The members of DREB A-1 and A-2 subgroups have been reported to be involved in response to various abiotic stresses. However, there were only a few genes belonging to A-3 to A-6 subgroups to be reported. In this study, we cloned a DREB A-4 subgroup gene from maize (Z...

The stability of hybrid plant viruses that might arise by recombination in transgenic plants was examined using hybrid viruses derived from the viral expression vectors potato virus X (PVX) and tobacco rattle virus (TRV). The potato virus Y (PVY) NIb and HCPro open reading frames (ORFs) were introduced into PVX to generate PVX-NIb and PVX-HCPro, while the PVY NIb ORF was introduced into a vecto...

Bacterial effector proteins delivered into eukaryotic cells via bacterial type III secretion systems are important virulence factors in plant-pathogen interactions. Type III secretion systems have been found in Rhizobium species that form symbiotic, nitrogen-fixing associations with legumes. One such bacterium, Rhizobium sp. NGR234, secretes a number of type III effectors, including nodulation ...

To further enhance the efficiency and potential of plants for phytoremediation of mercury pollution, a genetically engineered tobacco to simultaneously express mercury transporter, mercury transporter (MerT) and mercury chelator, polyphosphate (polyP) was constructed by integrating bacterial merT gene in polyphosphate kinase gene (ppk)-transgenic tobacco, and its ability to phytoremediate mercu...

Risk-assessment studies of virus-resistant transgenic plants (VRTPs) focussing on recombination of a plant virus with a transgenic sequence of a different virus should include a comparison of recombination frequencies between viruses in double-infected non-transgenic plants with those observed in singly infected transgenic plants to estimate recombination incidence in VRTPs. In this study, the ...

Hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) is an important signaling molecule that involved in multiple physiological metabolic processes plants. Excess H2O2 can destroy biological macromolecules to poison the cell. Thioredoxin peroxidase (Tpx) plays role protecting plants from oxidative damage by clearing H2O2. In this study, tomato Tpx (SlTpx) gene was cloned and bioinformatic analysis done. The mRNA transcrip...