Environmental stresses such as drought, freezing, and high salinity induce osmotic stress in plant cells. The plant response to osmotic stress involves a number of physiological and developmental changes, which are made possible, in part, by the modulation of the expression of specific genes. Phosphate-induced-1 gene (PHI-1) was first isolated from phosphate-treated phosphate-starved tobacco ce...

Our previous observation that host plant extracts induce production and secretion of mannitol in the tobacco pathogen Alternaria alternata suggested that, like their animal counterparts, plant pathogenic fungi might produce the reactive oxygen quencher mannitol as a means of suppressing reactive oxygen-mediated plant defenses. The concurrent discovery that pathogen attack induced mannitol dehyd...

BACKGROUND Designing functionally efficient recombinant promoters having reduced sequence homology and enhanced promoter activity will be an important step toward successful stacking or pyramiding of genes in a plant cell for developing transgenic plants expressing desired traits(s). Also basic knowledge regarding plant cell specific expression of a transgene under control of a promoter is cruc...

Cytochrome P450 2E1 (CYP2E1) is a key enzyme in the mammalian metabolism of several low molecular weight volatile organic compounds (VOCs), such as trichloroethylene (TCE), vinyl chloride (VC), carbon tetrachloride (CT), benzene, chloroform, and bromodichloromethane (BDCM), which are all common environmental pollutants that pose risks to human health. We have developed a transgenic tobacco (Nic...

Harpins, encoded by hrp (hypersensitive response and pathogenicity) genes of Gram-negative plant pathogens, are elicitors of hypersensitive response (HR). HpaXm is a novel harpin-like protein described from cotton leaf blight bacteria, Xanthomonas citri subsp. malvacearum-a synonym of X. campestris pv. malvacearum (Smith 1901-1978). A putative signal peptide (1-MNSLNTQIGANSSFL-15) of hpaXm was ...

To investigate the mechanisms of phytochrome action in vivo, we have overexpressed rice phytochrome in transgenic tobacco plants. A full-length rice phytochrome cDNA was fused to the cauliflower mosaic virus 35S promoter and transferred to tobacco. The progeny of some of the transgenic plants contain large amounts of rice phytochrome mRNA in green leaves. Extracts prepared from overexpressing p...

Strigolactones (SLs) are a class of phytohormones that regulate plant architecture. Carotenoid cleavage dioxygenase (CCD) genes are involved in the biosynthesis of SLs and are identified and characterized in many plants. However, the function of CCD genes in tobacco remains poorly understood. In this study, two closely related genes NtCCD8A and NtCCD8B were cloned from tobacco (Nicotiana tabacu...

We have previously observed that auxin can act as a repressor of the wound-inducible activation of a chimeric potato proteinase inhibitor II-CAT chimeric gene (pin2-CAT) in transgenic tobacco (Nicotiana tobacum) callus and in whole plants. Therefore, this study was designed to examine endogenous levels of indole-3-acetic acid (IAA) in plant tissues both before and after wounding. Endogenous IAA...

Wild type and corresponding transgenic tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum Miller) and two tobacco (Nicotiana spp.) plants that express high levels of a tobacco anionic peroxidase were used to determine what type of interactions occurred between peroxidase altered plant chemistry and the baculovirus Anagrapha falcifera nucleopolyhedrovirus (AfMNPV) for control of neonate corn earworms, Helicoverpa ...