Plant Sciences Commons^™

Evaluating The Potential Of Methyl Jasmonate Application As An Agricultural Practice On Phytochemicals In Brassica Vegetables: Sensory Quality, Cooking, And Cost-Benefit Analysis, Yu-Chun Chiu

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

In the United States, Brassica vegetables, including broccoli (Brassica oleracea var. italica) and kale (Brassica oleracea var. acephala or Brassicae napus var. pabularia), are widely consumed and are easily accessible in farmer’s market or grocery stores with increasing interest of their health-promoting properties. For example, the consumption of broccoli has been associated with anti-cancer activity in in vitro and in vivo trails due to the high content of phytochemicals, minerals, vitamins, and fibers. Application of methyl jasmonate (MeJA) has been reported to enhance the potential health-promoting compounds in Brassica vegetables, glucosinolates (GS), especially indolyl GS neoglucobrassicin …

Enhancing Water Stress Tolerance In Floriculture Crops, Suejin Park

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

Water deficit is one of the major constraints on plant growth and development, causing reduction of crop productivity. To minimize water loss, among many adaptation strategies, plants close their stomata to reduce transpiration. The stomatal closure is regulated by light, internal CO2 concentration, and plant hormones, mainly abscisic acid. Plants’ response mechanisms to water deficit are complex processes involving numerous genes and various signaling pathways. Floriculture crops are often exposed to water deficit during shipping and retailing, and these periods often result in damaged crops and profit loss. Understanding of plant responses to water deficit stress will provide us an …

Optimization Of Engineered Super Donor Strains Of Cryphonectria Parasitica To Reduce Canker Expansion In A Forest Setting, Amy Michelle Metheny

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

Chestnut blight, caused by the non-native fungus Cryphonectria parasitica, has decimated American chestnut (Castanea dentata) populations throughout the eastern U.S. over the last century. Biological control of blight, termed hypovirulence, has emerged naturally in the form of a debilitating hypovirus transmitted through hyphal anastomosis among vegetatively compatible C. parasitica strains. Six unlinked vegetative incompatibility (vic) loci regulate hyphal anastomosis and thus, hypovirus transmission, which has limited biocontrol efficacy in genotypically diverse communities. Recently, four of six vic loci have been disrupted to engineer two “super donor” or SD strains. In combining these strains, enhanced transmission …

The Nac Family Transcription Factor Gmnac42–1 Regulates Biosynthesis Of The Anticancer And Neuroprotective Glyceollins In Soybean, Md Asraful Jahan, Brianna Harris, Matthew Lowery, Katie Coburn, Aniello M. Infante, Ryan J. Percifield, Amanda G. Ammer, Nik Kovinich

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Background

Glyceollins are isoflavonoid-derived pathogen-inducible defense metabolites (phytoalexins) from soybean (Glycine max L. Merr) that have important roles in providing defense against pathogens. They also have impressive anticancer and neuroprotective activities in mammals. Despite their potential usefulness as therapeutics, glyceollins are not economical to synthesize and are biosynthesized only transiently and in low amounts in response to specific stresses. Engineering the regulation of glyceollin biosynthesis may be a promising approach to enhance their bioproduction, yet the transcription factors (TFs) that regulate their biosynthesis have remained elusive. To address this, we first aimed to identify novel abiotic stresses that enhance …

Bulked-Segregant Analysis Coupled To Whole Genome Sequencing (Bsa-Seq) For Rapid Gene Cloning In Maize, Harry Klein, Yuguo Xiao, Phillip A. Conklin, Rajanikanth Govindarajulu, Jacob A. Kelly, Michael J. Scanlon, Clinton J. Whipple, Madelaine Bartlett

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Forward genetics remains a powerful method for revealing the genes underpinning organismal form and function, and for revealing how these genes are tied together in gene networks. In maize, forward genetics has been tremendously successful, but the size and complexity of the maize genome made identifying mutant genes an often arduous process with traditional methods. The next generation sequencing revolution has allowed for the gene cloning process to be significantly accelerated in many organisms, even when genomes are large and complex. Here, we describe a bulked-segregant analysis sequencing (BSA-Seq) protocol for cloning mutant genes in maize. Our simple strategy can …

Structure Of The Ambrosia Beetle (Coleoptera: Curculionidae) Mycangia Revealed Through Micro-Computed Tomography, You Li, Yongying Ruan, Matthew T. Kasson, Edward L. Stanley, Conrad P.D.T Gillett, Andrew J. Johnson, Mengna Zhang, Jiri Hulcr

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Ambrosia beetles (Coleoptera: Curculionidae: Scolytinae and Platypodinae) rely on a symbiosis with fungi for their nutrition. Symbiotic fungi are preserved and transported in specialized storage structures called mycangia. Although pivotal in the symbiosis, mycangia have been notoriously difficult to study, given their minute size and membranous structure. We compared the application of novel visualization methods for the study of mycangia, namely micro-computed tomography (micro-CT) and laser ablation tomography (LATscan) with traditional paraffin sectioning. Micro-CT scanning has shown the greatest promise in new organ discovery, while sectioning remains the only method with sufficient resolution for cellular visualization. All three common types …

Arabidopsis Mate45 Antagonizes Local Abscisic Acid Signaling To Mediate Development And Abiotic Stress Responses, Nikola Kovinich, Yiqun Wang, Janet Adegboye, Alexandra A. Chanoca, Marisa S. Otegui, Paige Durkin, Erich Grotewold

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Anthocyanins provide ideal visual markers for the identification of mutations that disrupt molecular responses to abiotic stress. We screened Arabidopsis mutants of ABC (ATP‐Binding Cassette) and MATE (Multidrug And Toxic compound Extrusion) transporter genes under nutritional stress and identified four genes (ABCG25, ABCG9, ABCG5, and MATE45) required for normal anthocyanin pigmentation. ABCG25 was previously demonstrated to encode a vascular‐localized cellular expor- ter of abscisic acid (ABA). Our results show that MATE45 encodes an aerial meris- tem‐ and a vascular‐localized transporter associated with the trans‐Golgi, and that it plays an important role in controlling the levels and distribution of ABA in …

Chitosan Biopolymer Promotes Yield And Stimulates Accumulation Of Antioxidants In Strawberry Fruit, Mosaddiqur Rahman, Julakha Akter Mukta, Abdullah As Sabir, Dipall Rani Gupta, Mohammed Mohi-Ud-Din, Mirza Hasanuzzaman, Md. Giashuddin Miah, Mahfuzur Rahman, Md Tofazzai Islam

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Strawberry is a well-known source of natural antioxidants with excellent free radical scav- enging capacity. This study determined the effects of chitosan application in field condition on plant growth, fruit yield and antioxidant activities in strawberry fruit. Foliar applications of chitosan on strawberry significantly increased plant growth and fruit yield (up to 42% higher) compared to untreated control. Increased fruit yield was attributed to higher plant growth, individual fruit weight and total fruit weight/plant due to the chitosan application. Surprisingly, the fruit from plants sprayed with chitosan also had significantly higher contents (up to 2.6- fold) of carotenoids, anthocyanins, flavonoids …

Repeated Translocation Of A Gene Cassette Drives Sex-Chromosome Turnover In Strawberries, Jacob A. Tennessen, Na Wei, Shannon C.K. Straub, Rajanikanth Govindarajulu, Aaron Liston, Tia-Lynn Ashman

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Turnovers of sex-determining systems represent important diversifying forces across eukary- otes. Shifts in sex chromosomes—but conservation of the master sex-determining genes— characterize distantly related animal lineages. Yet in plants, in which separate sexes have evolved repeatedly and sex chromosomes are typically homomorphic, we do not know whether such translocations drive sex-chromosome turnovers within closely related taxo- nomic groups. This phenomenon can only be demonstrated by identifying sex-associated nucleotide sequences, still largely unknown in plants. The wild North American octoploid strawberries (Fragaria) exhibit separate sexes (dioecy) with homomorphic, female heteroga- metic (ZW) inheritance, yet sex maps to three different chromosomes in …

Pleiotropic And Epistatic Network-Based Discovery: Integrated Networks For Target Gene Discovery, Deborah Weighill, Piet Jones, Manesh Shah, Priya Ranjan, Wellington Muchero, Jeremy Schmutz, Avinash Sreedasyam, David Macaya-Sanz, Robert Sykes, Nan Zhao, Madhavi Z. Martin, Stephen Difazio, Timothy J. Tschaplinski, Gerald Tuskan, Daniel Jacobson

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Biological organisms are complex systems that are composed of functional networks of interacting molecules and macro-molecules. Complex phenotypes are the result of orchestrated, hierarchical, heterogeneous collections of expressed genomic variants. However, the effects of these variants are the result of historic selective pressure and current environmental and epigenetic signals, and, as such, their co-occurrence can be seen as genome-wide correlations in a number of different manners. Biomass recalcitrance (i.e., the resistance of plants to degradation or deconstruction, which ultimately enables access to a plant’s sugars) is a complex polygenic phenotype of high importance to biofuels initiatives. This study makes use …

Targeted Metabolomic And Transcriptomic Analyses Of “Red Russian” Kale (Brassicae Napus Var. Pabularia) Following Methyl Jasmonate Treatment And Larval Infestation By The Cabbage Looper (Trichoplusia Ni Hübner), Yu-Chun Chiu, John A. Juvik, Kang-Mo Ku

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Methyl jasmonate (MeJA), synthesized in the jasmonic acid (JA) pathway, has been found to upregulate glucosinolate (GS) biosynthesis in plant species of the Brassicaceae family. Exogenous application of MeJA has shown to increase tissue GS concentrations and the formation of myrosinase-mediated GS hydrolysis products (GSHPs). In vitro and in vivo assays have demonstrated the potential health-promoting effects of certain GSHPs. MeJA is also known to elicit and induce genes associated with defense mechanisms to insect herbivory in Brassica species. To investigate the relationship between MeJA-induced GS biosynthesis and insect defense, three treatments were applied to “Red Russian” kale (Brassicae napus …

Multivariate Analysis Of The Cotton Seed Ionome Reveals A Shared Genetic Architecture, Duke Pauli, Greg Ziegler, Min Ren, Matthew A. Jenks, Douglas J. Hunsaker, Min Zhang, Ivan Baxter, Michael A. Gore

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

To mitigate the effects of heat and drought stress, a better understanding of the genetic control of physiological responses to these environmental conditions is needed. To this end, we evaluated an upland cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.) mapping population under water-limited and well-watered con- ditions in a hot, arid environment. The elemental concentrations (ionome) of seed samples from the pop- ulation were profiled in addition to those of soil samples taken from throughout the field site to better model environmental variation. The elements profiled in seeds exhibited moderate to high heritabilities, as well as strong phenotypic and genotypic correlations between elements …

Estimating Taxon-Specific Population Dynamics In Diverse Microbial Communities, Benjamin J. Koch, Theresa A. Mchugh, Michaela Hayer, Egbert Schwartz, Steven J. Blazewicz, Paul Dijkstra, Natasja Van Gestel, Jane C. Marks, Rebecca L. Mau, Ember M. Morrissey, Jennifer Pett-Ridge, Bruce A. Hungate

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Understanding how population-level dynamics contribute to ecosystem-level processes is a primary focus of ecological research and has led to important breakthroughs in the ecology of macroscopic organisms. However, the inability to measure population-specific rates, such as growth, for microbial taxa within natural assemblages has limited ecologists’ understanding of how microbial populations interact to regulate ecosystem processes. Here, we use isotope incorporation within DNA molecules to model taxon- specific population growth in the presence of 18O-labeled water. By applying this model to phylogenetic marker sequencing data collected from stable-isotope probing studies, we estimate rates of growth, mortal- ity, and turnover for …

Combining Semi-Synthesis With Plant And Microbial Biocatalysis: New Frontiers In Producing A Chemical Arsenal Against Cancer†, Samuel Gary, Janet Adegboye, Brian Popp, Jean-Christophe Cocuron, Brooklyn Woodrum, Nik Kovinich

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Natural products (NPs) that exhibit anticancer activities are frequently not potent enough to be used clinically as therapeutics. Semi-synthesis and metabolic engineering are promising approaches for producing more efficacious derivatives of anticancer NPs (ACNPs), but each technique alone can be inefficient at obtaining specific ACNP derivatives that may be suspected to have enhanced anticancer activity. Here, we demonstrate that the methods of semi-synthesis and biocatalysis can be used as modules in succession and in different combinations to produce 6,8-dibromogenkwanin, a derivative of the ACNP apigenin. Further, we demonstrated that soybean seed coats can be used as a biocatalyst to convert …

Plant Probiotic Bacteria Bacillus And Paraburkholderia Improve Growth, Yield And Content Of Antioxidants In Strawberry Fruit, Mosaddiqur Rahman, Abdullah As Sabir, Julakha Akter Mukrta, Mohibul Alam Khan, Mohammed Mohi-Ud-Din, Giashuddin Miah, Mahfuzur Rahman, M. Tofazzal Islam

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Strawberry is an excellent source of natural antioxidants with high capacity of scavenging free radicals.

This study evaluated the effects of two plant probiotic bacteria, Bacillus amylolequefaciens BChi1 and Paraburkholderia fungorum BRRh-4 on growth, fruit yield and antioxidant contents in strawberry fruits. Root dipping of seedlings (plug plants) followed by spray applications of both probiotic bacteria in the field on foliage significantly increased fruit yield (up to 48%) over non-treated control. Enhanced fruit yield likely to be linked with higher root and shoot growth, individual and total fruit weight/plant and production of phytohormone by the probiotic bacteria applied on plants. …

Application Of Crispr/Cas9 Genome Editing Technology For The Improvement Of Crops Cultivated In Tropical Climates: Recent Progress, Prospects, And Challenges, Effi Haque, Hiroaki Taniguchi, Md. Mahmudul Hassan, Pankaj Bhowmik, M. Rezaul Karim, Magdalena Śmiech, Kaijun Zhao, Mahfuzur Rahman, Tofazzal Islam

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

The world population is expected to increase from 7.3 to 9.7 billion by 2050. Pest outbreak and increased abiotic stresses due to climate change pose a high risk to tropical crop production. Although conventional breeding techniques have significantly increased crop production and yield, new approaches are required to further improve crop production in order to meet the global growing demand for food. The Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR)/Cas9 (CRISPR-associated protein9) genome editing technology has shown great promise for quickly addressing emerging challenges in agriculture. It can be used to precisely modify genome sequence of any organism including plants …

Morphological, Genetic And Biochemical Characterization Of The Anti-Malarial Herb, Artemisia Annua Germplasm Collection At West Virginia University, Delini K. Samarasinghe

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

Malaria is one of the deadliest diseases in human history. Nearly half of the world’s population, is at the risk in 106 countries. Only in 2016, this disease killed about 445,000 people, 72% of them being children under age five. It also accounts for US $12 billion dollars of direct costs in Africa alone. Five different species of Plasmodium cause malaria but P. falciparum is the most detrimental one, causing 50% of all malaria cases and is considered as the deadliest parasite in humans. Artemisinin (ART), a 15 C sesquiterpenoid is currently the only precursor to the most effective anti-malarial …

Organic Versus Conventional Cropping Sustainability: A Comparative System Analysis, Tiffany L. Fess, Vagner Benedito

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

We are at a pivotal time in human history, as the agricultural sector undergoes consolidation coupled with increasing energy costs in the context of declining resource availability. Although organic systems are often thought of as more sustainable than conventional operations, the lack of concise and widely accepted means to measure sustainability makes coming to an agreement on this issue quite challenging. However, an accurate assessment of sustainability can be reached by dissecting the scientific underpinnings of opposing production practices and crop output between cropping systems. The purpose of this review is to provide an in-depth and comprehensive evaluation of modern …

Apple Pomace Consumption Favorably Alters Hepatic Lipid Metabolism In Young Female Sprague-Dawley Rats Fed A Western Diet, Roy Chris Skinner, Derek C. Warren, Soofie N. Lateef, Vagner A. Benedito, Janet C. Tou

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Apple pomace, which is a waste byproduct of processing, is rich in several nutrients, particularly dietary fiber, indicating potential benefits for diseases that are attributed to poor diets, such as non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). NAFLD affects over 25% of United States population and is increasing in children. Increasing fruit consumption can influence NAFLD. The study objective was to replace calories in standard or Western diets with apple pomace to determine the effects on genes regulating hepatic lipid metabolism and on risk of NAFLD. Female Sprague-Dawley rats were randomly assigned (n = 8 rats/group) to isocaloric diets of AIN-93G and …

Mammal Communities Are Larger And More Diverse In Moderately Developed Areas, Arielle Waldstein Parsons, Tavis Forrester, Megan C. Baker-Whatton, William J. Mcshea, Christopher T. Rota, Stephanie G. Schuttler, Joshua J. Millspaugh, Roland Kays

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Developed areas are thought to have low species diversity, low animal abundance, few native predators, and thus low resilience and ecological function. Working with citizen scientist volunteers to survey mammals at 1427 sites across two development gradients (wild-rural-exurban- suburban-urban) and four plot types (large forests, small forest fragments, open areas and residential yards) in the eastern US, we show that developed areas actually had significantly higher or statistically similar mammalian occupancy, relative abundance, richness and diversity compared to wild areas. However, although some animals can thrive in suburbia, conservation of wild areas and preservation of green space within cities are …

Chromosome-End Knockoff Strategy To Reshape Alkaloid Profiles Of A Fungal Endophyte, Simona Florea, Timothy D. Phillips, Daniel G. Panaccione, Mark L. Farman, Christopher L. Schardl

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Molecular genetic techniques to precisely eliminate genes in asexual filamentous fungi require the introduction of a marker gene into the target genome. We developed a novel strategy to eliminate genes or gene clusters located in subterminal regions of chromosomes, and then eliminate the marker gene and vector backbone used in the transformation procedure. Because many toxin gene clusters are subterminal, this method is particularly suited to generating nontoxic fungal strains. We tested this technique on Epichloë coenophiala, a seed-transmissible symbiotic fungus (endophyte) of the important forage grass, tall fescue (Lolium arundinaceum). The endophyte is necessary for maximal productivity and sustainability …

Data Supporting The Nuclear Phylogenomics Of The Palm Subfamily Arecoideae (Arecaceae), Jason R. Comer, Wendy B. Zomlefer, Craig F. Barrett, Dennis Wm. Stevenson, Karolina Heyduk, James H. Leebens-Mack

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

This data article provides data and supplemental materials refer-enced in“Nuclear phylogenomics of the palm subfamily Arecoi-deae (Arecaceae)”(Comer et al., 2016)[1]. Raw sequence readsgenerated for this study are available through the Sequence ReadArchive (SRA Study Accession: SRP061467). An aligned super-matrix of 168 nuclear genes for 35 taxa (34 palms and one out-group taxon) is provided. Also provided are individual maximumlikelihood gene trees used for the coalescent based analyses, out-put from the maximum parsimony analyses, and twofigures.

Transcriptome And Metabolome Analyses Of Glucosinolates In Two Broccoli Cultivars Following Jasmonate Treatment For The Induction Of Glucosinolate Defense To Trichoplusia Ni (Hübner), Kang-Mo Ku, Talon M. Becker, John A. Juvik

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Lepidopteran larvae growth is influenced by host plant glucosinolate (GS) concentrations, which are, in turn, influenced by the phytohormone jasmonate (JA). In order to elucidate insect resistance biomarkers to lepidopteran pests, transcriptome and metabolome analyses following JA treatments were conducted with two broccoli cultivars, Green Magic and VI-158, which have differentially induced indole GSs, neoglucobrassicin and glucobrassicin, respectively. To test these two inducible GSs on growth of cabbage looper (Trichoplusia ni), eight neonate cabbage looper larvae were placed onto each of three plants per JA treatments (0, 100, 200, 400 M) three days after treatment. After five days of feeding, …

Checklist And Atlas Of The Vascular Flora Of West Virginia, Donna I. Ford-Werntz, Paul J. Harmon, William Grafton

WV Flora Datasets

No abstract provided.