Authors: Brian Reavy Svetlana Bagirova Nina V Chichkova Svetlana V Fedoseeva Sang Hyon Kim Andrey B Vartapetian Michael E Taliansky
Publish Date: 2007/03/17
Volume: 26, Issue: 8, Pages: 1215-1219
Abstract
Agrobacterium tumefaciens VirD2 protein is one of the key elements of Agrobacteriummediated plant transformation a process of transfer of TDNA sequence from the Agrobacterium tumour inducing plasmid into the nucleus of infected plant cells and its integration into the host genome The VirD2 protein has been shown to be a substrate for a plant caspaselike protease activity PCLP in tobacco We demonstrate here that mutagenesis of the VirD2 protein to prevent cleavage by PCLP increases the efficiency of reporter gene transfer and expression These results indicate that PCLP cleavage of the Agrobacterium VirD2 protein acts to limit the effectiveness of TDNA transfer and is a novel resistance mechanism that plants utilise to combat Agrobacterium infectionWe thank B Hohn Fiedrich MiescherInstitute Basel Switzerland for kindly providing the cDNA clones of pAVD43 and pPM6000K The work was supported by the Scottish Executive Environment and Rural Affairs Department Scottish Enterprise Tayside by the Royal Society MT and ABV and the Russian Foundation for Basic Research ABV and NVC
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