ABSTRACT
Amorphophallus konjac is an important economic crop widely used in health products and biomaterials. However, this monocotyledonous plant's production is seriously restricted by soft rot disease. Some Bacillus thuringiensis strains generate an endocellular acyl homoserine lactonase (AiiA), which has inhibitory effect on soft rot pathogen through disrupting the signal molecules (N-acylhomoserine lactones, AHL) of their Quorum Sensing system. The aim of our study is to obtain transgenic A. konjac expressing AiiA protein and exhibiting resistance to soft rot. But till now, there is not any report about exogenous gene transformation in A. konjac. In this research, an Agrobacterium-mediated genetic transformation system was constructed. An aiiA gene was synthesized according to the codon usage in A. konjac. Embryogenic callus was infected with the A. tumefaciens strain EHA105 harboring the plant transformation plasmid pU1301 plus synthesized aiiA gene. After antibiotics screening, 34 plants were obtained. PCR analysis showed that positive amplified fragments were present in 21 out of these 34 lines. Southern blot analysis indicated that aiiA gene had integrated into the genome of A. konjac. Western blotting demonstrated that the target protein of interest was reactive with the antibody against AiiA. Further disease resistance detection revealed that all of the tested transgenic A. konjac lines exhibited high resistance to soft rot bacteria Erwinia carotovora subsp. Carotovora (Ecc) SCG1. The protocol is useful for the quality improvement of A. konjac through genetic transformation.
Subject(s)
Amorphophallus/genetics , Amorphophallus/microbiology , Bacillus thuringiensis/enzymology , Carboxylic Ester Hydrolases/genetics , Immunity, Innate/immunology , Plant Diseases/immunology , Plant Diseases/microbiology , Amorphophallus/immunology , Base Sequence , Blotting, Southern , Blotting, Western , DNA, Plant/genetics , DNA, Plant/isolation & purification , Genome, Plant/genetics , Molecular Sequence Data , Pectobacterium carotovorum/physiology , Plant Diseases/genetics , Plant Leaves/genetics , Plant Leaves/microbiology , Plants, Genetically Modified , Polymerase Chain ReactionABSTRACT
An endophytic antagonistic bacterium was isolated from Amorphophallus konjac calli. In order to identify this bacterium, 16S rDNA was amplified and partially sequenced. Sequence comparison showed that this sequence has the highest similarity to that in Bacillus subtilis, with 99.0% identities. That demonstrated this bacterium belongs to Bacillus subtili , named BSn5. The extracted extracellular protein from strain BSn5 had antibacterial activity against Erwinia carotovora subp. carotovora, which was unstable after heated, sensitive to proteinase K and resistant to trypsin. There was only a 31.6kDa protein component as by SDS-PAGE detection. Nondenaturing polyacrylaminde gel was used to purify this protein. The purified 31.6kDa protein exhibited inhibitory activity against Erwinia carotovora subp. carotovora. This protein is different from all known metabolites from Bacillus subtilis, suggesting that it may be a novel antibacterial protein.