The aerial parts of plants are protected from desiccation and other stress by surface cuticular waxes. The total cuticular wax loads and the expression of wax biosynthetic genes are significantly downregulated in Arabidopsis thaliana under dark conditions. We isolated Decrease Wax Biosynthesis (DEWAX), which encodes an AP2/ERF-type transcription factor that is preferentially expressed in the ep...

Primary aerial surfaces of terrestrial plants are very often covered with three-dimensional epicuticular waxes. Such wax coverages play an important role in insect-plant interactions. Wax blooms have been experimentally shown in numerous previous studies to be impeding locomotion and reducing attachment of insects. Among the mechanisms responsible for these effects, a possible adsorption of ins...

A procedure is presented for the simultaneous prediction of fluid–fluid and solid–fluid equilibrium of light gases/heavy hydrocarbons systems under pressure. The objective of this work is to simplify the predictive approach previously proposed by the authors, making it more useful and accessible to users at the petroleum industry. The main modification with respect to the complex LCVM (linear c...

The thermal denaturation of ribonuclease A has been studied by use of Fourier transform nuclear magnetic resonance by monitoring the imidazole C-2 proton resonances of the histidine residues as a function of temperature at pH 1.3. As the temperature is raised, a slow chemical exchange process results in the disappearance of the peaks corresponding to the native conformation and the appearance o...

Land plants secrete a layer of wax onto their aerial surfaces that is essential for survival in a terrestrial environment. This wax is composed of long-chain, aliphatic hydrocarbons derived from very-long-chain fatty acids (VLCFAs). Using the Arabidopsis expressed sequence tag database, we have identified a gene, designated CUT1 , that encodes a VLCFA condensing enzyme required for cuticular wa...

Plants prevent dehydration by coating their aerial, primary organs with waxes. Wax compositions frequently differ between species, organs, and developmental stages, probably to balance limiting nonstomatal water loss with various other ecophysiological roles of surface waxes. To establish structure-function relationships, we quantified the composition and transpiration barrier properties of the...

ABSTRACT Russin, J. S., Guo, B. Z., Tubajika, K. M., Brown, R. L., Cleveland, T. E., and Widstrom, N. W. 1997. Comparison of kernel wax from corn genotypes resistant or susceptible to Aspergillus flavus. Phytopathology 87: 529-533.Kernels of corn genotype GT-MAS: gk are resistant to Aspergillus flavus. Earlier studies showed that this resistance is due in part to kernel pericarp wax. Experiment...