Stylosanthes sp. is the most important forage legume in tropical areas worldwide. Stylosanthes anthracnose, which is mainly caused by Colletotrichum gloeosporioides, is a globally severe disease in stylo production. Little progress has been made in anthracnose molecular pathogenesis research. In this study, Agrobacterium tumefaciens-mediated transformation was used to transform Stylosanthes col...

Ten phenols were selected as natural laccase mediators after screening 44 different compounds with a recalcitrant dye (Reactive Black 5) as a substrate. Their performances were evaluated at different mediator/dye ratios and incubation times (up to 6 h) by the use of Pycnoporus cinnabarinus and Trametes villosa laccases and were compared with those of eight known synthetic mediators (including -...

The Agrobacterium tumefaciens virB7 gene product is a lipoprotein whose function is required for the transmission of oncogenic T-DNA to susceptible plant cells. Three lines of study provided evidence that VirB7 interacts with and stabilizes other VirB proteins during the assembly of the putative T-complex transport apparatus. First, a precise deletion of virB7 from the pTiA6NC plasmid of wild-t...

BACKGROUND Fungal laccases are multicopper oxidases with huge applicability in different sectors. Here, we describe the development of a set of high-throughput colorimetric assays for screening laccase libraries in directed evolution studies. RESULTS Firstly, we designed three colorimetric assays based on the oxidation of sinapic acid, acetosyringone and syringaldehyde with λmax of 512, 520 a...

BACKGROUND As a valuable medicinal plant, Madagascar periwinkle (Catharanthus roseus) produces many terpenoid indole alkaloids (TIAs), such as vindoline, ajamlicine, serpentine, catharanthine, vinblastine and vincristine et al. Some of them are important components of drugs treating cancer and hypertension. However, the yields of these TIAs are low in wild-type plants, and the total chemical sy...

Although the tobacco N gene, which confers resistance to Tobacco mosaic virus (TMV), is transcriptionally induced by infection with TMV, the regulatory mechanism has not previously been elucidated. We found that a 5¢-flanking region of the N gene exhibits TMVinducible promoter activity and that the region from )290 to )271 includes a cis-acting element in response to infection. The activity req...

Agrobacterium tumefaciens is a Gramnegative rod-shaped bacterium that is commonly found in the rhizosphere of many plants, where it survives on root exudates. It will infect a plant only through a wound site (which often occurs in nursery stock through transplanting and grafting and in vineyards through pruning). Galls typically form at the crown (the point at the soil line where the main root ...

Virus-induced gene silencing has been suggested as a powerful and rapid technique for analysis of gene function in plant growth and development (Baulcombe, 1999). Infecting Nicotiana benthamiana with Tobacco Rattle Virus (TRV) containing a fragment of the gene encoding phytoene desaturase, an essential enzyme in carotene synthesis, results in a photo-bleached phenotype in photosynthetic tissues...

Bananas and plantains are an important source of food and income for millions of persons in the world. Their production is constrained by many biotic and abiotic stress factors but their improvement through traditional plant breeding methods is very difficult because they do not produce seeds, are polyploid and have a long generation time. Biotechnological approaches like genetic transformation...

and the bar gene was transmitted through both male and female gametes and expressed in T1 progeny. Although Agrobacterium tumefaciens has been successfully used Microprojectile bombardment and gene transfer by to transfer genes to a wide range of plant species, it has received litA. tumefaciens are currently the two most common tle attention for transformation of forage grasses. Therefore, the ...