ISHS Acta Horticulturae 521: XXV International Horticultural Congress, Part 11: Application of Biotechnology and Molecular Biology and Breeding - Gene Expression and Molecular Breeding, Genome Analysis.
PLANT GENE EXPRESSION IN NEMATODE-INDUCED FEEDING SITES AND STRATEGIES FOR ENGINEERING NEMATODE CONTROL |
| Authors: | N. Barthels, M. Karimi, I. Vercauteren, M. Van Montagu, G. Gheysen |
| Keywords: | pest control, plant biotechnology, plant disease, sedentary endoparasitic nematodes |
| Abstract:
Efforts by several research teams to gather information on how feeding cells of sedentary endoparasitic nematodes are molecularly supported evolve more and more toward a comprehension of the involved plant gene expression and regulation. Effective genetically engineered nematode control can be achieved by using a combination of a specific nematode-inducible promoter and the destructive effect of a selected gene product targeted toward the nematode or the feeding cell. Feeding site-expressed genes are currently being catalogued. The expression of many plant genes with known function and pattern is being monitored by using reporter gene systems (e.g.  -glucuronidase) to study the potential role of these genes in the interaction between the nematode and its host.
Specific searches including the screening of cDNA libraries and, more recently, the differential display technique allowed the identification of differentially expressed sequences.
Promoter traps have been successfully used to isolate nematode-responsive regulatory regions and deletion studies are aimed to obtain more refined nematode-responsive elements.
So far, linkage of a tagged promoter with a native gene could not often be proven, but such a correspondence might not be necessary for engineering nematode control.
Because the plant's gene regulation was not developed as such to serve nematodes, strict confinement of gene activity to feeding structures is not always feasible and therefore the so-called two-component system might be useful for its counterbalancing effect on eventual undesired leakiness.
The more the catalogue broadens, the more possibilities it will create to find the most suitable and promising promoter-gene combination to fight nematode attack.
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