Possible suppression of exogenous beta-1,3-glucanase gene gluc78 on rice transformation and growth

Three genes encoding for fungal cell wall degrading enzymes (CWDE), ech42, nag7O and gluc78 from the biocontrol fungus Trichoderma atroviride were transformed into rice mediated by Agrobacterium tumefaciens singly and in all possible combinations. A total of more than 1800 independently regenerated plantlets in seven different populations (for each of the three genes and each of the four gene combinations) were obtained. Our data indicated that gluc78 gene had negative effects on transformation frequency and plant growth. Some regenerated plants with gluc78 gene were stunted; spontaneously produced brown specks; could not tassel. The combination with either one of the two other genes (ech42, nag70) present in the same T-DNA region reduced the negative effect of gluc78 on plant growth. These results indicated that expression of several genes in one T-DNA region interfered with each other and expression of exogenous gene in recipient plant was a complex behavior. (c) 2007 Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd.

野大豆贮藏蛋白的基因的克隆及早期发育的基因表达的研究

豆科植物是动物获取植物蛋白的主要来源之一。豆类种子储藏蛋白作为一种多基因家族的产物专一性地积累于种子的发育过程。植物遗传工程需要深入地了解基因的特异性表达及调控。种子储藏蛋白基因为这类研究提供了一个理想的研究系统。在我国生长着大量的野生豆科资源，许多优良性状被期望应用于将来的植物遗传工程研究．本文选择了一种富含种子储藏蛋白高达50%的野生大豆品种Glycine soja 79-34作为材料进行了以下的研究： 1、大豆7s储藏蛋白基因同源片段的克隆。 以原生质体作为初始材料游离大片段染色体DNA，原生质体经低渗处理而破裂，方法简便，得到的DNA分子量大且重复率高。大片段染色体DNA经EcoRI酶切后，用32P标记的大豆a'-亚基基因作为探针进行分子杂交，得同源片段的杂交带。其中分子量大约为6.3kb的同源片段被克隆到Puc9质粒中，通过x-gal/IPTG培养基及原位杂交初步筛选出5个克隆。进一步的Sourthern分子杂交确认了一个克隆包含7s储藏蛋白a'-亚基基因的同源片段。其详细的序列分析尚需进一步进行。 2、种子储藏蛋白基因在体细胞胚胎发生中的表达。 以授粉20天左右的幼胚作为外植体，在含有2mg/l 2,4,5-T的B5液体培养基中直接诱导愈伤组织，一个月内得到了均一的野生大豆悬浮培养体系。悬浮培养细胞转至含有0.5mg／l萘乙酸，O.1mg／l 2,4-D，0.5mg／l BA，0.5mg/l玉米素的B5液体培养基中，得到了处于不同发育阶段的体细胞胚。分别从体细胞胚及悬浮培养细胞中提取总RNA，以种子储藏蛋白基因为探针，RNA斑点杂交首先证明种子储藏蛋白基因在体细胞胚中转录水平上的表达，而在末分化的悬浮培养细胞中则检测不到．从处于不同发育时期（球形胚，心形胚，鱼雷形胚及带有分化子叶的胚）的体细胞中分别提取盐溶蛋白，用大豆储藏蛋白的兔抗血清做Western blotting分析，发现最早在球形胚中即能检测到种子储藏蛋白的积累，大大早于合子胚发育过程中种子储藏蛋白积累的时期．随着体细胞的发育，储藏蛋白的积累略有增加，但总体水平上不如合子胚发育中的明显。本研究从几个方面探讨了种子储藏蛋白基因在体细胞胚及合子胚发育过程中表达的相似性及差异，并对其产生差异的原因作出了推测。 3、果蝇同源转化基因在植物基因组中的检测及表达的探讨。 果蝇同源转化基因(Homeotic gene)被认为是早期胚胎发育过程中形态发生的开关基因。在动物界中已有80多个同源序列从不同进化水平的动物中分离出来，是一个非常保守而与发育密切相关的基因。本研究以果蝇同源转化基因为探针，分别在野生大豆及土豆的基因组中都检测到了该基因同源序列的存在。用野生大豆染色体DNA的多种内切酶片段做分子杂交分析发现至少有一个拷贝的基因同源性非常高。进一步关于该基因表达的研究发现，在未成熟胚及浸泡过夜的种子中都能检测到该基因的表达，但在休眠种子，萌发5天以上的种子及成熟叶片中未能检测到。该基因的表达只局限于早期发育，因而推测其功能有与动物界中的一般性。

Origin and evolution of new exons in rodents

Gene number difference among organisms demonstrates that new gene origination is a fundamental biological process in evolution. Exon shuffling has been universally observed in the formation of new genes. Yet to be learned are the ways new exons originate and evolve, and how often new exons appear. To address these questions, we identified 2695 newly evolved exons in the mouse and rat by comparing the expressed sequences of 12,419 orthologous genes between human and mouse, using 743,856 pig ESTs as the outgroup. The new exon origination rate is about 2.71 x 10(-3) per gene per million years. These new exons have markedly accelerated rates both of nonsynonymous substitutions and of insertions/ deletions (indels). A much higher proportion of new exons have Kappa(a)/Kappa(s) ratios > 1 (where K-a is the nonsynonymous substitution rate and K-s is the synonymous substitution rate) than K do the old exons shared by human and mouse, implying a role of positive selection in the rapid evolution. The majority of these new exons have sequences unique in the genome, suggesting that most new exons might originate through "exonization" of intronic sequences. Most of the new exons appear to be alternative exons that are expressed at low levels.

RNAi沉默烟草GA 20-氧化酶基因研究

赤霉素是一种高效能的广谱植物生长调节剂，为五大植物激素之一，具有重要的生物学功能。目前利用赤霉素突变体研究生物合成途径和信号转导已经成为热点。 GA 20-氧化酶是GA生物合成中的一类关键酶，它位于GA合成途径的中心位置。本研究根据烟草（Nicotiana tabacum）GA 20-氧化酶基因序列，设计2对分别含有特定酶切位点的特异引物，以烟草基因组DNA为模板，扩增目的基因(约250 bp)片段。将正、反向目的片段分别插入中间载体的内含子两侧，再经BamH I和Sac I双酶切回收约700 bp的目的片段，插入到双元载体质粒p2355中，成功构建了含GA 20-氧化酶基因片段反向重复序列的植物表达载体p23700。分别将p2355质粒和p23700质粒导入根癌农杆菌（Agrobacterium tumefaciens）EHA105中并转化烟草叶片细胞，经卡那霉素选择培养，PCR及GUS组织染色鉴定，获得转基因烟草植株。以EHA105-p2355转化的烟草，获得41株转基因植株，均没有矮化表型；而以EHA105-p23700转化的烟草，获得转基因植株14株，其中具有矮化表型的烟草10株，表明反向重复序列转录产物能形成发夹RNA(hpRNA)，产生小分子干扰RNA（small interferring RNA，简称siRNA），干扰目的基因的表达。 赤霉素含量测定表明矮化植株中赤霉素合成途径的最终产物GA3总含量明显低于野生型烟草植株。荧光定量PCR结果表明，矮化转基因烟草的GA 20-氧化酶基因表达量受到明显抑制，表达量明显低于野生型对照。同时对上游内根-贝壳杉合成酶（Ent-kaurene synthase，KS）基因，下游的GA-3β羟化酶基因进行了RT-PCR分析，结果显示上游基因的表达没有规律性变化，而下游基因表达量亦降低。上述结果表明，GA 20-氧化酶基因的表达被有效地干扰了，表达受到抑制，从而影响植株体内GA3的合成，影响植株的生长发育，导致植株矮化。并推测，GA 20-氧化酶基因受到抑制，可能影响下游基因的表达。并且通过干旱胁迫测试，发现矮化植株相对于野生型植株及不含干扰片段的转基因植株，对干旱的耐受力有了很大的提高，具有更强的耐受力。 研究结果为进一步进行相关研究奠定基础。 Gibberellin(GA) is an efficient plant growth regulator. As one of five major plant hormones, it plays an important biological function. Using GA mutant for investigating biosynthetic pathways and signal transduction has become high lights. GA 20-oxidase is a crucial enzyme involved in gibberellin biosynthesis. According to tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum) GA 20-oxidase enzyme gene sequence and based on binary vector p2355, we constructed a plant expression vector p23700, which habors an inverted repeat DNA fragment of GA 20-oxidase gene drivered by Cauliflower mosaic virus promtor (CaMV 35Sp). Binary plasmid p2355 had no inverted repeat DNA fragment of GA 20-oxidase gene. The vector p2355 and p23700 were introduced into Agrobacterium tumefaciens EHA105 and tobacco leaf transformation was conducted. After selected by kanamycin and characterized by PCR and GUS hischemical reaction, transsgenic plants were obtained. Fourtheen transgenic plants, which were transformed by EHA105-p23700, were obtained. Among them, 10 were dwarf mutants. However, 41 transgenic plants with the same normal phenotype as wild type,which were transformed by EHA105-p2355, were obtained. Analysis of Gibberellin contents showed that it was lower in dwarf mutants than in normal phenotype plants. Moreover, comparing to normal phenotype plants including wild type and transgenic plants with no interference fragment, the drought tolerance of dwarf plants have greatly increased. And their proline content increased obviously after drought test. Fluorescence quantitative real time PCR (RT-PCR) showed that GA 20-oxidase gene expression was significantly inhibited in dwarf transgenic tobacco. Meanwhile, the expression of the upstream gene ent-kaurene synthase (KS) gene and downstream gene GA-3β hydroxylase gene was also detected by RT-PCR. The results presented that KS gene expression had no regular change while GA-3β hydroxylase gene expression reduced. It implied that inhibiting GA 20-oxidase gene probably reduce the expression of downstream genes. The results showed that the transcriptional products of the foreign inverted repeat fragment can form hairpin RNA (hpRNA) to induce RNAi. It presented that GA 20-oxidase gene expression was effectively interfered, resulting in reducing GA3 synthesis and inhibiting plant growth and development, then dwarf plants were produced. However, the dwarf plants had higher tolerance of drought.

CDNA cloning and mRNA expression of the lipopolysaccharide- and beta-1,3-glucan-binding protein gene from scallop Chlamys farreri

Lipopolysaccharide and beta-1,3-glucan-binding protein (LGBP) play a crucial role in the innate immune response of invertebrates as a pattern recognition protein (PRP). The scallop LGBP gene was obtained from Chlamys farreri challenged by Vibrio anguillarum by randomly sequencing cDNA clones from a whole body cDNA library, and by fully sequencing a clone with homology to known LGBP genes. The scallop LGBP consisted of 1876 nucleotides with a canonical polyadenylation signal sequence AATAAA and a poly(A) tail, encoding a polypeptide of 440 amino acids with the estimated molecular mass of 47.16 kDa and a predicted isoelectric point of 5.095. The deduced amino acid sequence showed a high similarity to that of invertebrate recognition proteins from blue shrimp, black tiger shrimp, mosquito, freshwater crayfish, earthworms, and sea urchins, with conserved features including a potential polysaccharide-binding motif, a glucanase motif, and N-glycosylation sites. The temporal expression of LGBP genes in healthy and V. anguillarum-challenged C farreri scallop, measured by real-time semiquantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (PCR), showed that expression was up-regulated initially, followed by recovery as the stimulation cleared. Results indicated that scallop LGBP was a constitutive and inducible acute-phase protein that could play a critical role in scallop-pathogen interaction. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Small but influential: the role of microRNAs on gene regulatory network and 3 ' UTR evolution

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are endogenous similar to 22 nucleotide noncoding RNAs that regulate the expression of complementary messenger RNAs (mRNAs). Thousands of miRNA genes have been found in diverse species, and many of them are highly conserved. With the mi

Chromosomal localization and molecular marker development of the lipopolysaccharide and beta-1,3-glucan binding protein gene in the Zhikong scallop Chlamys farreri (Jones et Preston) (Pectinoida, Pectinidae)

Zhikong scallop Chlamys farreri(Jones et Preston) is an economically important species in China. Understanding its immune system would be of great help in controlling diseases. In the present study, an important immunity-related gene, the Lipopolysaccharide and Beta-1,3-glucan Binding Protein (LGBP) gene, was located on C. farreri chromosomes by mapping several lgbp-containing BAC clones through fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH). Through the localization of various BAC clones, it was shown that only one locus of this gene existed in the genome of C. farreri, and that this was located on the long arm of a pair of homologous chromosomes. Molecular markers, consisting of eight single nucleotide polymorphism (SNPs) markers and one insertion-deletion (indel), were developed from the LGBP gene. Indel marker testing in an F1 family revealed slightly distorted segregation (p = 0.0472). These markers can be used to map the LGBP gene to the linkage map and assign the linkage group to the corresponding chromosome. Segregation distortion of the indel marker indicated genes with deleterious alleles might exist in the surrounding region of the LGBP gene.