Agrobacterium Rhizogenes: Transformed Root Cultures for the Study of Polyacetylene Metabolism and Biosynthesis

摘要

Biologically active polyacetylenes are produced at low levels by the roots of members of the Coreopsidinae subtribe in the Asteraceae. Ten taxa of Coreopsis and Bidens were tranformed with Agrobacterium rhizogenes Strain A sub 4 and hairy root cultures established. These cultures grew rapidly and produced the same arrays of polyacetylenes as intact roots. The use of transformed roots for the study of polyacetylene biosynthesis is described in this paper. The engineering of plants with resistance to herbicides is now a practical reality because there are economic, intellectual and environmental incentives for using recombinant DNA technology in crop improvement programs, and because the biochemical and genetic basis for herbicide resistance is a simple trait conferred by a single gene. The transformation of plants with genes conferring resistance to insects or disease is more daunting, however, as biologically active secondary metabolites such as some alkaloids are typically products of multienzyme reactions. Photoactive polyacetylenes are probably plant defense chemicals and they are derived by a sequence of desaturation steps from oleic acid, which occurs ubiquitously in higher plants. Although the acetylene pathway may encompass as many genetic messages as those for morphine biosynthesis, it is likley that the genes controlling the biosynthesis of polyacetylenes may be isolated, identified in the near future and transferred via Agrobacterium to economically important plants susceptible to pathogen attack.