scholarly journals Overexpression of Mannitol-1-Phosphate Dehydrogenase Increases Mannitol Accumulation and Adds Protection Against Chilling Injury in Petunia

2005 ◽  
Vol 130 (4) ◽  
pp. 605-610 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yu-Jen Chiang ◽  
C. Stushnoff ◽  
A.E. McSay ◽  
M.L. Jones ◽  
H.J. Bohnert

Petunia ×hybrida (Hook) Vilm. cv. Mitchell was transformed with an E. coli gene encoding mannitol-1-phosphate dehydrogenase (mtlD). Four plant lines that grew on kanamycin and contained the mtlD transgene were identified. Two of these lines contained high levels of mannitol [high-mannitol lines M3 and M8; mean mannitol = 3.39 μmol·g-1 dry weight (DW)] compared to nontransformed wild-type plants (0.86 μmol·g-1 DW), while two lines had mannitol levels similar to wild-type plants (low-mannitol lines M2 and M9; mean mannitol = 1.05 μmol·g-1 DW). Transgenic and control plants were subjected to chilling stress (3 ± 0.5 °C day/0 ± 0.5 °C night, 12-hour photoperiod and 75% relative humidity) to evaluate the role of mannitol in chilling tolerance. Based upon foliage symptoms and membrane leakage after a 3-week chilling treatment, the high-mannitol containing lines, M3 and M8, were more tolerant of chilling stress than the low-mannitol containing transgenic lines, M2 and M9, and wild-type. Under nonchilling conditions mannitol was the only carbohydrate that differed among transgenic lines, but all carbohydrates were present. When subjected to chilling stress, mannitol levels dropped by 75%, sucrose by 52%, and inositol by 54% in the low-mannitol lines (M2 and M9). In M3 and M8, the high-mannitol lines, mannitol levels decreased by 36%, sucrose by 25%, and inositol by 56%, respectively. Raffinose increased 2- to 3-fold in all lines following exposure to low-temperature chilling stress. In the higher mannitol lines only 0.04% to 0.06% of the total osmotic potential generated from all solutes could be attributed to mannitol, thus its action is more like that of an osmoprotectant rather than an osmoregulator. This study demonstrates that metabolic engineering of osmoprotectant synthesis pathways can be used to improve stress tolerance in horticultural crops.

HortScience ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 519d-519 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth R. Schroeder ◽  
Dennis P. Stimart

Nicotiana alata Link and Otto. was transformed via Agrobacterium tumefaciens encoding a senescence-specific promoter SAG12 cloned from Arabidopsis thaliana fused to a Agrobacterium tumefaciens gene encoding isopentenyl transferase (IPT) that catalyzes cytokinin synthesis. This was considered an autoregulatory senescence-inhibitor system. In 1996, we reported delayed senescence of intact flowers by 2 to 6 d and delayed leaf senescence of transgenic vs. wild-type N. alata. Further evaluations in 1997 revealed several other interesting effects of the SAG12-IPT gene construct. Measurement of chlorophyll content of mature leaves showed higher levels of both chlorophyll a and b in transgenic material under normal fertilization and truncated fertilization regimes. At 4 to 5 months of age transgenic plants expressed differences in plant height, branching, and dry weight. Plant height was reduced by 3 to 13 cm; branch counts increased 2 to 3 fold; and shoot dry weight increased up to 11 g over wild-type N. alata. These observations indicate the system is not tightly autoregulated and may prove useful to the floriculture industry for producing compact and more floriferous plants.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (15) ◽  
pp. 6865
Author(s):  
Eun Seon Lee ◽  
Joung Hun Park ◽  
Seong Dong Wi ◽  
Ho Byoung Chae ◽  
Seol Ki Paeng ◽  
...  

The thioredoxin-h (Trx-h) family of Arabidopsis thaliana comprises cytosolic disulfide reductases. However, the physiological function of Trx-h2, which contains an additional 19 amino acids at its N-terminus, remains unclear. In this study, we investigated the molecular function of Trx-h2 both in vitro and in vivo and found that Arabidopsis Trx-h2 overexpression (Trx-h2OE) lines showed significantly longer roots than wild-type plants under cold stress. Therefore, we further investigated the role of Trx-h2 under cold stress. Our results revealed that Trx-h2 functions as an RNA chaperone by melting misfolded and non-functional RNAs, and by facilitating their correct folding into active forms with native conformation. We showed that Trx-h2 binds to and efficiently melts nucleic acids (ssDNA, dsDNA, and RNA), and facilitates the export of mRNAs from the nucleus to the cytoplasm under cold stress. Moreover, overexpression of Trx-h2 increased the survival rate of the cold-sensitive E. coli BX04 cells under low temperature. Thus, our data show that Trx-h2 performs function as an RNA chaperone under cold stress, thus increasing plant cold tolerance.


2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Madhavi Latha Gandla ◽  
Niklas Mähler ◽  
Sacha Escamez ◽  
Tomas Skotare ◽  
Ogonna Obudulu ◽  
...  

Abstract Background Bioconversion of wood into bioproducts and biofuels is hindered by the recalcitrance of woody raw material to bioprocesses such as enzymatic saccharification. Targeted modification of the chemical composition of the feedstock can improve saccharification but this gain is often abrogated by concomitant reduction in tree growth. Results In this study, we report on transgenic hybrid aspen (Populus tremula × tremuloides) lines that showed potential to increase biomass production both in the greenhouse and after 5 years of growth in the field. The transgenic lines carried an overexpression construct for Populus tremula × tremuloides vesicle-associated membrane protein (VAMP)-associated protein PttVAP27-17 that was selected from a gene-mining program for novel regulators of wood formation. Analytical-scale enzymatic saccharification without any pretreatment revealed for all greenhouse-grown transgenic lines, compared to the wild type, a 20–44% increase in the glucose yield per dry weight after enzymatic saccharification, even though it was statistically significant only for one line. The glucose yield after enzymatic saccharification with a prior hydrothermal pretreatment step with sulfuric acid was not increased in the greenhouse-grown transgenic trees on a dry-weight basis, but increased by 26–50% when calculated on a whole biomass basis in comparison to the wild-type control. Tendencies to increased glucose yields by up to 24% were present on a whole tree biomass basis after acidic pretreatment and enzymatic saccharification also in the transgenic trees grown for 5 years on the field when compared to the wild-type control. Conclusions The results demonstrate the usefulness of gene-mining programs to identify novel genes with the potential to improve biofuel production in tree biotechnology programs. Furthermore, multi-omic analyses, including transcriptomic, proteomic and metabolomic analyses, performed here provide a toolbox for future studies on the function of VAP27 proteins in plants.


2003 ◽  
Vol 94 (6) ◽  
pp. 2534-2544 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wieslaw Kozak ◽  
Anna Kozak

Male C57BL/6J mice deficient in nitric oxide synthase (NOS) genes (knockout) and control (wild-type) mice were implanted intra-abdominally with battery-operated miniature biotelemeters (model VMFH MiniMitter, Sunriver, OR) to monitor changes in body temperature. Intravenous injection of lipopolysaccharide (LPS; 50 μg/kg) was used to trigger fever in response to systemic inflammation in mice. To induce a febrile response to localized inflammation, the mice were injected subcutaneously with pure turpentine oil (30 μl/animal) into the left hindlimb. Oral administration (gavage) of N G-monomethyl-l-arginine (l-NMMA) for 3 days (80 mg · kg−1 · day−1in corn oil) before injection of pyrogens was used to inhibit all three NOSs ( N G-monomethyl-d-arginine acetate salt and corn oil were used as control). In normal male C57BL/6J mice, l-NMMA inhibited the LPS-induced fever by ∼60%, whereas it augmented fever by ∼65% in mice injected with turpentine. Challenging the respective NOS knockout mice with LPS and with l-NMMA revealed that inducible NOS and neuronal NOS isoforms are responsible for the induction of fever to LPS, whereas endothelial NOS (eNOS) is not involved. In contrast, none of the NOS isoforms appeared to trigger fever to turpentine. Inhibition of eNOS, however, exacerbates fever in mice treated with l-NMMA and turpentine, indicating that eNOS participates in the antipyretic mechanism. These data support the hypothesis that nitric oxide is a regulator of fever. Its action differs, however, depending on the pyrogen used and the NOS isoform.


2000 ◽  
Vol 182 (19) ◽  
pp. 5479-5485 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helena I. M. Boshoff ◽  
Valerie Mizrahi

ABSTRACT A pyrazinamidase (PZase)-deficient pncA mutant ofMycobacterium tuberculosis, constructed by allelic exchange, was used to investigate the effects of heterologous amidase gene expression on the susceptibility of this organism to pyrazinamide (PZA) and related amides. The mutant was highly resistant to PZA (MIC, >2,000 μg/ml), in accordance with the well-established role ofpncA in the PZA susceptibility of M. tuberculosis (A. Scorpio and Y. Zhang, Nat. Med. 2:662–667, 1996). Integration of the pzaA gene encoding the major PZase/nicotinamidase from Mycobacterium smegmatis (H. I. M. Boshoff and V. Mizrahi, J. Bacteriol. 180:5809–5814, 1998) or the M. tuberculosis pncA gene into the pncAmutant complemented its PZase/nicotinamidase defect. In bothpzaA- and pncA-complemented mutant strains, the PZase activity was detected exclusively in the cytoplasm, suggesting an intracellular localization for PzaA and PncA. ThepzaA-complemented strain was hypersensitive to PZA (MIC, ≤10 μg/ml) and nicotinamide (MIC, ≥20 μg/ml) and was also sensitive to benzamide (MIC, 20 μg/ml), unlike the wild-type andpncA-complemented mutant strains, which were highly resistant to this amide (MIC, >500 μg/ml). This finding was consistent with the observation that benzamide is hydrolyzed by PzaA but not by PncA. Overexpression of PzaA also conferred sensitivity to PZA, nicotinamide, and benzamide on M. smegmatis (MIC, 150 μg/ml in all cases) and rendered Escherichia colihypersensitive for growth at low pH.


Blood ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 118 (23) ◽  
pp. 6132-6140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tasneem Motiwala ◽  
Nicola Zanesi ◽  
Jharna Datta ◽  
Satavisha Roy ◽  
Huban Kutay ◽  
...  

Abstract We previously demonstrated that the gene encoding PTPROt, the truncated form of protein tyrosine phosphatase receptor type O expressed predominantly in hematopoietic cells, is a candidate tumor suppressor and is down-regulated in chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). Here, we show that PTPROt expression is significantly reduced in CD19+ spleen B cells from Eμ-T cell leukemia 1 (TCL1) transgenic mice relative to the wild-type mice. Strikingly, as much as a 60% decrease in PTPROt expression occurs at 7 weeks independently of promoter methylation. To elucidate the potential mechanism for this early suppression of PTPROt in these mice, we explored the role of activating protein-1 (AP-1) in its expression. We first demonstrate that AP-1 activation by 12-O-tetradecanoylphorbol-13-acetate induces PTPROt expression with concurrent recruitment of c-fos and c-jun to its promoter. The PTPROt promoter is also responsive to over- and underexpression of AP-1, confirming the role of AP-1 in PTPROt expression. Next, we demonstrate that TCL1 can repress the PTPROt promoter by altering c-fos expression and c-jun activation state. Finally, using primary CLL cells we have shown an inverse relationship between TCL1 and PTPROt expression. These findings further substantiate the role of TCL1 in PTPROt suppression and its importance in the pathogenesis of CLL.


2015 ◽  
Vol 2015 ◽  
pp. 1-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manal Alkan ◽  
François Machavoine ◽  
Rachel Rignault ◽  
Julie Dam ◽  
Michel Dy ◽  
...  

Recent evidence has highlighted the role of histamine in inflammation. Since this monoamine has also been strongly implicated in the pathogenesis of type-1 diabetes, we assessed its effect in the nonobese diabetic (NOD) mouse model. To this end, we used mice (inactivated) knocked out for the gene encoding histidine decarboxylase, the unique histamine-forming enzyme, backcrossed on a NOD genetic background. We found that the lack of endogenous histamine in NOD HDC−/−mice decreased the incidence of diabetes in relation to their wild-type counterpart. Whereas the proportion of regulatory T and myeloid-derived suppressive cells was similar in both strains, histamine deficiency was associated with increased levels of immature macrophages, as compared with wild-type NOD mice. Concerning the cytokine pattern, we found a decrease in circulating IL-12 and IFN-γin HDC−/−mice, while IL-6 or leptin remained unchanged, suggesting that histamine primarily modulates the inflammatory environment. Paradoxically, exogenous histamine given to NOD HDC−/−mice provided also protection against T1D. Our study supports the notion that histamine is involved in the pathogenesis of diabetes, thus providing additional evidence for its role in the regulation of the immune response.


Microbiology ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 152 (6) ◽  
pp. 1741-1750 ◽  
Author(s):  
Renjith Mathew ◽  
Raju Mukherjee ◽  
Radhakrishnan Balachandar ◽  
Dipankar Chatterji

The ω subunit, the smallest subunit of bacterial RNA polymerase, is known to be involved in maintaining the conformation of the β′ subunit and aiding its recruitment to the rest of the core enzyme assembly in Escherichia coli. It has recently been shown in Mycobacterium smegmatis, by creating a deletion mutation of the rpoZ gene encoding ω, that the physiological role of the ω subunit also includes providing physical protection to β′. Interestingly, the mutant had altered colony morphology. This paper demonstrates that the mutant mycobacterium has pleiotropic phenotypes including reduced sliding motility and defective biofilm formation. Analysis of the spatial arrangement of biofilms by electron microscopy suggests that the altered phenotype of the mutant arises from a deficiency in generation of extracellular matrix. Complementation of the mutant strain with a copy of the wild-type rpoZ gene integrated in the bacterial chromosome restored both sliding motility and biofilm formation to the wild-type state, unequivocally proving the role of ω in the characteristics observed for the mutant bacterium. Analysis of the cell wall composition demonstrated that the mutant bacterium had an identical glycopeptidolipid profile to the wild-type, but failed to synthesize the short-chain mycolic acids characteristic of biofilm growth in M. smegmatis.


2008 ◽  
Vol 74 (21) ◽  
pp. 6584-6590 ◽  
Author(s):  
Boguslaw Lupa ◽  
Erik L. Hendrickson ◽  
John A. Leigh ◽  
William B. Whitman

ABSTRACT Methanococcus maripaludis, an H2- and formate-utilizing methanogen, produced H2 at high rates from formate. The rates and kinetics of H2 production depended upon the growth conditions, and H2 availability during growth was a major factor. Specific activities of resting cells grown with formate or H2 were 0.4 to 1.4 U�mg−1 (dry weight). H2 production in formate-grown cells followed Michaelis-Menten kinetics, and the concentration of formate required for half-maximal activity (Kf ) was 3.6 mM. In contrast, in H2-grown cells this process followed sigmoidal kinetics, and the Kf was 9 mM. A key enzyme for formate-dependent H2 production was formate dehydrogenase, Fdh. H2 production and growth were severely reduced in a mutant containing a deletion of the gene encoding the Fdh1 isozyme, indicating that it was the primary Fdh. In contrast, a mutant containing a deletion of the gene encoding the Fdh2 isozyme possessed near-wild-type activities, indicating that this isozyme did not play a major role. H2 production by a mutant containing a deletion of the coenzyme F420-reducing hydrogenase Fru was also severely reduced, suggesting that the major pathway of H2 production comprised Fdh1 and Fru. Because a Δfru-Δfrc mutant retained 10% of the wild-type activity, an additional pathway is present. Mutants possessing deletions of the gene encoding the F420-dependent methylene-H4MTP dehydrogenase (Mtd) or the H2-forming methylene-H4MTP dehydrogenase (Hmd) also possessed reduced activity, which suggested that this second pathway was comprised of Fdh1-Mtd-Hmd. In contrast to H2 production, the cellular rates of methanogenesis were unaffected in these mutants, which suggested that the observed H2 production was not a direct intermediate of methanogenesis. In conclusion, high rates of formate-dependent H2 production demonstrated the potential of M. maripaludis for the microbial production of H2 from formate.


Pathogens ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (9) ◽  
pp. 774
Author(s):  
Virginio Cepas ◽  
Victoria Ballén ◽  
Yaiza Gabasa ◽  
Miriam Ramírez ◽  
Yuly López ◽  
...  

Current Escherichia coli antibiofilm treatments comprise a combination of antibiotics commonly used against planktonic cells, leading to treatment failure. A better understanding of the genes involved in biofilm formation could facilitate the development of efficient and specific new antibiofilm treatments. A total of 2578 E. coli mutants were generated by transposon insertion, of which 536 were analysed in this study. After sequencing, Tn263 mutant, classified as low biofilm-former (LF) compared to the wild-type (wt) strain (ATCC 25922), showed an interruption in the purL gene, involved in the de novo purine biosynthesis pathway. To elucidate the role of purL in biofilm formation, a knockout was generated showing reduced production of curli fibres, leading to an impaired biofilm formation. These conditions were restored by complementation of the strain or addition of exogenous inosine. Proteomic and transcriptional analyses were performed to characterise the differences caused by purL alterations. Thirteen proteins were altered compared to wt. The corresponding genes were analysed by qRT-PCR not only in the Tn263 and wt, but also in clinical strains with different biofilm activity. Overall, this study suggests that purL is essential for biofilm formation in E. coli and can be considered as a potential antibiofilm target.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document