A 1.2-kilobase pair fragment of the 5' upstream region of a potato wound-inducible gene (wun1) was fused to different marker genes (wun1-CAT, wun1-NPTII). Stable integration of a wun1-CAT chimeric gene into the tobacco genome led to a high wound-inducible chloramphenicol acetyltransferase activity in leaves. Transient expression experiments in potato protoplasts showed that wun1 carries a stron...

Retinoic acid (RA) has been proposed to be a direct regulator of HOX gene complexes. However, the molecular mechanism of the RA signaling pathway during normal development is unclear. We have identified an RA-responsive element in the promoter of HOXB1 gene composed of two functionally separable sites: (i) a DR-2 sequence, which is the direct target of the RA receptor retinoid X receptor hetero...

Bacillus subtilis plasmid pGR71 is a promoter-probe shuttle vector derived from pUB110. The expression of the cat gene on pGR71 in B. subtilis requires the insertion of a Bacillus promoter and a ribosomal binding site (RBS) into the HindIII cloning site immediately upstream from the cat gene. A recombinant plasmid of pGR71, named pGR71-369, was obtained by a spontaneous deletion of a fragment c...

The marine bacterium Vibrio fischeri serves as a model organism for a variety of natural phenomena, including symbiotic host colonization. The ease with which the V. fischeri genome can be manipulated contributes greatly to our ability to identify the factors involved in these phenomena. Here, we have adapted genetic tools for use in V. fischeri to promote our ability to conditionally control t...

Cleavage of heparan sulfate by the beta-D-endoglucuronidase heparanase (HPSE) is a fundamental event in a number of important physiological processes including inflammation, wound healing, and angiogenesis. HPSE activity has also been directly correlated with pathological conditions such as tumor growth and metastasis and autoimmune disease. The tight regulation of HPSE expression and function ...

Gibberellins (GA) promote while abscisic acid (ABA) inhibits seed germination and post-germination growth. To address the cross-talk of GA and ABA signaling, we studied two rice WRKY genes (OsWRKY51 and OsWRKY71) that are ABA-inducible and GA-repressible in embryos and aleurone cells. Over-expression of these two genes in aleurone cells specifically and synergistically represses induction of th...

Identification of pathogen-inducible promoters largely lags behind cloning of the genes for disease resistance. Here, we cloned the soybean GmaPPO12 gene and found that it was rapidly and strongly induced by Phytophthorasojae infection. Computational analysis revealed that its promoter contained many known cis-elements, including several defense related transcriptional factor-binding boxes. We ...