We investigated the role of polyamines (PAs) in lima bean (Phaseolus lunatus) leaves on the production of herbivorous mite (Tetranychus urticae)-induced plant volatiles that attract carnivorous natural enemies of the herbivores. To do this, we focused on the effects of the exogenous PAs [cadaverine, putrescine, spermidine and spermine (Spm)] on the production of volatiles, H(2)O(2) and jasmonic...

Plants under herbivore attack are able to initiate indirect defense by synthesizing and releasing complex blends of volatiles that attract natural enemies of the herbivore. However, little is known about how plants respond to infestation by multiple herbivores, particularly if these belong to different feeding guilds. Here, we report the interference by a phloem-feeding insect, the whitefly Bem...

The heats of reaction of trypsin with soybean (Kunitz), ovomucoid, and lima bean inhibitors have been measured at pH 5.0 and 10’ and 25”. All the reactions were endothermic, with AH ranging from 8.6 Cal per mole for the lima bean inhibitor to 15.3 Cal per mole for the soybean inhibitor. Equilibrium constants for the association were calculated from the dependence of residual tryptic activity up...

Hageman factor (HF, factor XII) that has been exposed to Sephadex-ellagic acid gels is a single-chain species (HFea) with amidolytic properties for the synthetic substrate H-D-phenylalanyl-L-pipecolyl-L-arginine p-nitroanilide. Earlier we reported that amidolysis was suppressed by incubation of HFea with specific antiserum. The present study provides additional evidence that the amidolytic prop...

Plants are able to respond to herbivore damage with de novo biosynthesis of an herbivore-characteristic blend of volatiles. The signal transduction initiating volatile biosynthesis may involve the activation of the octadecanoid pathway, as exemplified by the transient increase of endogenous jasmonic acid (JA) in leaves of lima bean (Phaseolus lunatus) after treatment with the macromolecular eli...

In response to herbivore (Spodoptera littoralis) attack, lima bean (Phaseolus lunatus) leaves produced hydrogen peroxide (H(2)O(2)) in concentrations that were higher when compared to mechanically damaged (MD) leaves. Cellular and subcellular localization analyses revealed that H(2)O(2) was mainly localized in MD and herbivore-wounded (HW) zones and spread throughout the veins and tissues. Pref...

The distribution of xanthine dehydrogenase throughout the soybean plant as well as the intercellular localization of xanthine dehydrogenase within soybean nodules was determined. Polyclonal antibodies against purified xanthine dehydrogenase were prepared and used in an enzymelinked immunosorbent assay to determine whether xanthine dehydrogenase is a nodule-specific protein. This immunological a...

Introduction The primary gene pool of Lima bean (Phaseolus lunatus L.), one of the main cultivated species of Phaseolus, may be divided into two morphogroups, a Mesoamerican and an Andean one. Each group comprises both wild and cultivated forms. Recently, phylogenetic studies on P. lunatus supported an Andean origin of the species (Fofana et aL, 1999; Maquet et al, 1999). Two main independent d...

To set up an in situ conservation strategy for Phaseolus lunatus, we analyzed the genetic structure of 29 populations in the Central Valley of Costa Rica. Using 22 enzyme loci, we quantified the proportion of polymorphic loci (P(p)), the mean number of alleles per locus (A), and the mean effective number of alleles per locus (A(e)), which equaled to 10.32%, 1.10, and 1.05, respectively. The tot...

The fluorescence of lima bean trypsin inhibitor is due to a single tyrosine residue at position 69. The lifetime of this tyrosine fluorescence is 620 +/- 50 ps (mean +/- SD) and is little affected by addition of 0.88 M citrate, an efficient quencher of tyrosine fluorescence. The steady-state emission intensity is also only weakly reduced by the quencher. The tyrosine is thus not accessible to t...