Life Sciences Commons^™

An Intergenic Region Shared By At4g35985 And At4g35987 In Arabidopsis Thaliana Is A Tissue Specific And Stress Inducible Bidirectional Promoter Analyzed In Transgenic Arabidopsis And Tobacco Plants, Joydeep Banerjee, Dipak K. Sahoo, Nrisingha Dey, Robert Houtz, Indu B. Maiti

Kentucky Tobacco Research and Development Center Faculty Publications

On chromosome 4 in the Arabidopsis genome, two neighboring genes (calmodulin methyl transferase At4g35987 and senescence associated gene At4g35985) are located in a head-to-head divergent orientation sharing a putative bidirectional promoter. This 1258 bp intergenic region contains a number of environmental stress responsive and tissue specific cis-regulatory elements. Transcript analysis of At4g35985 and At4g35987 genes by quantitative real time PCR showed tissue specific and stress inducible expression profiles. We tested the bidirectional promoter-function of the intergenic region shared by the divergent genes At4g35985 and At4g35987 using two reporter genes (GFP and GUS) in both orientations in transient tobacco protoplast and …

Epigenetic Dominance Of Prion Conformers, Eri Saijo, Hae-Eun Kang, Jifeng Bian, Kristi G. Bowling, Shawn Browning, Sehun Kim, Nora Hunter, Glenn C. Telling

Microbiology, Immunology, and Molecular Genetics Faculty Publications

Although they share certain biological properties with nucleic acid based infectious agents, prions, the causative agents of invariably fatal, transmissible neurodegenerative disorders such as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, sheep scrapie, and human Creutzfeldt Jakob disease, propagate by conformational templating of host encoded proteins. Once thought to be unique to these diseases, this mechanism is now recognized as a ubiquitous means of information transfer in biological systems, including other protein misfolding disorders such as those causing Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases. To address the poorly understood mechanism by which host prion protein (PrP) primary structures interact with distinct prion conformations to influence pathogenesis, …

Construction Of A Sonchus Yellow Net Virus Minireplicon: A Step Toward Reverse Genetic Analysis Of Plant Negative-Strand Rna Viruses, Uma Ganesan, Jennifer N. Bragg, Min Deng, Sharon Marr, Mi Yeon Lee, Shasha Qian, Manling Shi, Justin Kappel, Cole Peters, Yeon Lee, Michael M. Goodin, Ralf G. Dietzgen, Zhenghe Li, Andrew O. Jackson

Plant Pathology Faculty Publications

Reverse genetic analyses of negative-strand RNA (NSR) viruses have provided enormous advances in our understanding of animal viruses over the past 20 years, but technical difficulties have hampered application to plant NSR viruses. To develop a reverse genetic approach for analysis of plant NSR viruses, we have engineered Sonchus yellow net nucleorhabdovirus (SYNV) minireplicon (MR) reporter cassettes for Agrobacterium tumefaciens expression in Nicotiana benthamiana leaves. Fluorescent reporter genes substituted for the SYNV N and P protein open reading frames (ORFs) exhibited intense single-cell foci throughout regions of infiltrated leaves expressing the SYNV MR derivatives and the SYNV nucleocapsid (N), phosphoprotein …

Plant-Symbiotic Fungi As Chemical Engineers: Multi-Genome Analysis Of The Clavicipitaceae Reveals Dynamics Of Alkaloid Loci, Christopher L. Schardl, Carolyn A. Young, Uljana Hesse, Stefan G. Amyotte, Kalina Andreeva, Patrick J. Calie, Damien J. Fleetwood, David C. Haws, Neil Moore, Birgitt Oeser, Daniel G. Panaccione, Kathryn K. Schweri, Christine R. Voisey, Mark L. Farman, Jerzy W. Jaromczyk, Bruce A. Roe, Donal M. O'Sullivan, Barry Scott, Paul Tudzynski, Zhiqiang An, Elissaveta G. Arnaoudova, Charles T. Bullock, Nikki D. Charlton, Li Chen, Murray Cox, Randy D. Dinkins, Simona Florea, Anthony E. Glenn, Anna Gordon, Ulrich Güldener, Daniel R. Harris, Walter Hollin, Jolanta Jaromczyk, Richard D. Johnson, Anar K. Khan, Eckhard Leistner, Adrian Leuchtmann, Chunjie Li, Jinge Liu, Jinze Liu, Miao Liu, Wade Mace, Caroline Machado, Padmaja Nagabhyru, Juan Pan, Jan Schmid, Koya Sugawara, Ulrike Steiner, Johanna E. Takach, Eiji Tanaka, Jennifer S. Webb, Ella V. Wilson, Jennifer L. Wiseman, Ruriko Yoshida, Zheng Zeng

Plant Pathology Faculty Publications

The fungal family Clavicipitaceae includes plant symbionts and parasites that produce several psychoactive and bioprotective alkaloids. The family includes grass symbionts in the epichloae clade (Epichloë and Neotyphodium species), which are extraordinarily diverse both in their host interactions and in their alkaloid profiles. Epichloae produce alkaloids of four distinct classes, all of which deter insects, and some-including the infamous ergot alkaloids-have potent effects on mammals. The exceptional chemotypic diversity of the epichloae may relate to their broad range of host interactions, whereby some are pathogenic and contagious, others are mutualistic and vertically transmitted (seed-borne), and still others vary in pathogenic …

Mites In The Promoters Of Effector Genes Allow Prediction Of Novel Virulence Genes In Fusarium Oxysporum, Sarah M. Schmidt, Petra M. Houterman, Ines Schreiver, Lisong Ma, Stefan G. Amyotte, Biju Chellappan, Sjef Boeren, Frank L. W. Takken, Martijn Rep

Plant Pathology Faculty Publications

BACKGROUND: The plant-pathogenic fungus Fusarium oxysporum f.sp.lycopersici (Fol) has accessory, lineage-specific (LS) chromosomes that can be transferred horizontally between strains. A single LS chromosome in the Fol4287 reference strain harbors all known Fol effector genes. Transfer of this pathogenicity chromosome confers virulence to a previously non-pathogenic recipient strain. We hypothesize that expression and evolution of effector genes is influenced by their genomic context.

RESULTS: To gain a better understanding of the genomic context of the effector genes, we manually curated the annotated genes on the pathogenicity chromosome and identified and classified transposable elements. Both retro- and DNA transposons are present …