Plants produce a variety of toxic compounds, which are often used as anticancer drugs. The self-resistance mechanism to these toxic metabolites in the producing plants, however, remains unclear. The plant-derived anticancer alkaloid camptothecin (CPT) induces cell death by targeting DNA topoisomerase I (Top1), the enzyme that catalyzes changes in DNA topology. We found that CPT-producing plants...

Bacillus thuringiensis is a major source of insecticidal genes imparting insect resistance in transgenic plants. Level of expression of transgenes in transgenic plants is important to achieve desirable level of resistance against target insects. In order to achieve desirable level of expression, rice chloroplast transit peptide sequence was fused with synthetic cry2AX1 gene to target its protei...

In transgenic Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana), expression of the Cucumber mosaic virus (CMV) 2b silencing suppressor protein from the severe subgroup IA strain Fny disrupted microRNA (miRNA)-regulated development but orthologs from mild subgroup II strains (Q and LS) did not, explaining strain-specific differences in symptom severity. However, it is unknown which miRNAs affected by Fny2b cri...

In recent years, the type II CRISPR system has become a widely used and robust technique to implement site-directed mutagenesis in a variety of species including model and crop plants. However, few studies manipulated metabolic pathways in plants using the CRISPR system. Here, we introduced the pYLCRISPR/Cas9 system with one or two single-site guide RNAs to target the tomato phytoene desaturase...

Histone deacetylation regulates gene expression during plant stress responses and is therefore an interesting target for epigenetic manipulation of stress sensitivity in plants. Unfortunately, overexpression of the core enzymes (histone deacetylases [HDACs]) has either been ineffective or has caused pleiotropic morphological abnormalities. In yeast and mammals, HDACs operate within multiprotein...

A model to predict the distribution of harvest dates in an Easter lily crop was validated using data from several locations. Plants were individually harvested (i.e. removed from the greenhouse for shipping) when flowers on a plant reached a minimum flower bud length. A computer decision-support system called LilyDate was developed to allow the model to be used to optimize greenhouse temperatur...

BACKGROUND Chemical suppression of arthropod herbivores is the most common approach to plant protection. Insecticides, however, can cause unintended, adverse consequences for non-target organisms. Previous studies focused on the effects of pesticides on target and non-target pests, predatory arthropods, and concomitant ecological disruptions. Little research, however, has focused on the direct ...

Although artificial microRNA (amiRNA) technology has been used frequently in gene silencing in plants, little research has been devoted to investigating the accuracy of amiRNA precursor processing. In this work, amiRNAchs1 (amiRchs1), based on the Arabidopsis miR319a precursor, was expressed in order to suppress the expression of CHS genes in petunia. The transgenic plants showed the CHS gene-s...

Plant-soil feedbacks and interspecific competition are ubiquitous interactions that strongly influence the performance of plants. Yet few studies have examined whether the strength of these interactions corresponds with the abundance of plant species in the field, or whether feedbacks and competition interact in ways that either ameliorate or exacerbate their effects in isolation. We sampled so...

.......................................................................................... LIST OF PUBLICATIONS.......................................................................... LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS........................................................................ INTRODUCTION.................................................................................... 1. BACKGROUND..........