The molecular interaction between plants and insects is dynamic and
multifaceted. We are interested in understanding the molecular mechanism that insects
utilize to overcome plant defense proteins, as well as discovering novel plant insecticidal
proteins. Three projects were developed. First, we evaluated the effects of soybean
cysteine protease inhibitor (soyacystatin N, scN) on the growth and development in
southern corn rootworm. Both subtractive suppressed hybridization (SSH) and cDNA
microarray analyses were used to uncover the changes of gene expression profiles in
southern corn rootworm under the scN challenge. The counterdefense-related genes were
identified, suggesting that southern corn rootworm deployed several regulatory
mechanisms to overcome the dietary scN. Second, to identify and confirm insecticidal
properties of vegetative storage protein 2 in Arabidopsis (AtVSP2), the gene was cloned
and expressed in E.coli. This protein showed acid phosphatase activity. Feeding assay
indicated that AtVSP increased the mortality and delayed the development of two
coleopteran and one dipteran insects. Third, to identify the molecular mechanism of this novel insecticidal protein, P element mutagenesis was utilized to generate AtVSP
resistant mutants (VRs). Two balanced VR mutants and their revertants were generated,
and can be used to further characterize the genetic loci of P element inserted in the
mutants.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/4855 |
| Date | 25 April 2007 |
| Creators | Liu, Yilin |
| Contributors | Zhu-Salzman, Keyan |
| Publisher | Texas A&M University |
| Source Sets | Texas A and M University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Book, Thesis, Electronic Dissertation, text |
| Format | 812474 bytes, electronic, application/pdf, born digital |
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