cotton (gossypium hirsutum l.)  is an important fiber crop in iran, cultivated on 150000-200000 ha of land.  in iran the estimated loss due to the insect pest is more than 30%. traditionally, pests are controlled by 10-12 times spraying per growing season of environmentally harmful chemical insecticides (e.g. endosulfan and/or methosystox). in order to produce transgenic cotton resistance to in...

Studies of the biology of Borrelia burgdorferi and the pathogenesis of Lyme disease are severely limited by the current lack of genetic tools. As an initial step toward facile genetic manipulation of this pathogenic spirochete, we have investigated gene inactivation by allelic exchange using a mutated borrelial gyrB gene that confers resistance to the antibiotic coumermycin A1 as a selectable m...

BACKGROUND Volvocine green algae like Pandorina morum represent one of the most recent inventions of multicellularity diverged from their unicellular relatives. The 8-16 celled P. morum alga and its close multicellular relatives constitute a model lineage for research into cellular differentiation, morphogenesis and epithelial folding, sexual reproduction and evolution of multicellularity. Pand...

A pyrithiamine (PT) resistance gene (ptrA) was cloned from a PT resistant mutant of Aspergillus oryzae and was useful as a dominant selectable marker for transformation of all A. oryzae wild type strain as well as A. nidulans. For further study, we examined whether or not ptrA could be used as the transformation marker in other species of filamentous fungi. Two types of plasmid, which contain p...

Hypocrea jecorina is an industrially important filamentous fungus due to its effective production of hydrolytic enzymes. It has received increasing interest because of its ability to convert lignocellulosic biomass to monomeric sugars, which can be converted into biofuels or platform chemicals. Genetic engineering of strains is a highly important means of meeting the requirements of tailor-made...

Plant resistance genes (R-genes) drive the immune responses of crops against specific pathotypes disease-causing organisms. Over time, genetic diversity in R-genes and R-pseudogenes has arisen among different rice varieties. This bioinformatics study was carried out to (i) predict full sets candidate nucleotide-binding site leucine-rich repeat (NLR) present six genomes; (ii) detect variation wi...

PhiC31 integrase-mediated gene delivery has been extensively used in gene therapy and animal transgenesis. However, random integration events are observed in phiC31-mediated integration in different types of mammalian cells; as a result, the efficiencies of pseudo attP site integration and evaluation of site-specific integration are compromised. To improve this system, we used an attB-TK fusion...

plant tissue culture techniques are used as basic requirement of common plant transformation systems. in most cases of plant transformation, a reproducible regeneration protocol is the limiting step due to long time lasting, specialized facilities and well experienced persons. furthermore, tissue culture procedures induce somaclonal variation among regenerated transgenic plants. therefore, rece...

Plants respond to heat stress by producing heat-shock proteins. These are regulated promoters containing regulatory elements, which can be harnessed control protein expression both temporally and spatially. In this study, we designed heat-inducible produce the diterpene casbene in Nicotiana benthamiana, through a multi-step metabolic pathway. To potentially increase gene transcription, coupled ...