SEARCHING FOR INSECT RESISTANCE GENES IN SUGARCANE

摘要

Deciphering plant-insect interactions at the molecular level is one of the major topics of interest in contemporary plant biology research. In the last several years, various aspects of the plant response to insect damage have been investigated, including the characterisation of direct and indirect responses, regulation of gene expression resulting from insect attack and the signal transduction pathways. This research has resulted in the proposal of new methods to enhance host resistance to insect pests, including the use of insecticidal genes which could be transferred by genetic engineering into target crops. Combining an understanding of how plants react to insect damage with molecular biology techniques should increase the wide range of methodsto control insect attack. The sugarcane transcriptome project (SUCEST) provided the identification of several orthologues of genes involved on plant response to insect damage. Here, we summarise several aspects of the complex interaction between plants and insects, and provide details on some genes expressed in sugarcane in response to insect attack.