biologia plantarum

Biologia plantarum 64:535-540, 2020 | DOI: 10.32615/bp.2020.067

Evaluation of two promoters for generating transgenic potato plants as salicylic acid biosensors

H.M. ABD EL-HALIM^1,*, I.M. ISMAIL¹, N.M. AL ABOUD³, D. ELGHAREEB^1,4, E.A. METRY¹, A.F. HOSSIEN², E.M. FAHMY²

¹ Agricultural Genetic Engineering Research Institute, Agricultural Research Center, Giza 12619, Egypt

² Department of Genetics, Faculty of Agriculture, Ain Shams University, Cairo 11241, Egypt Department of Biology, Faculty of Applied Science, Umm Al-Qura University, Makkah 24381, Saudi Arabia³

⁴ Department of Biology, Al-Jumum University College, Umm Al-Qura University, Makkah 25376, Saudi Arabia

Plants are severely affected by many biotic stresses, which cause a reduction in crop quality and quantity. One of the strategies to manage biotic stresses is the generation of transgenic plant lines that can be used as biosensors. These biosensor plants can trigger an early warning upon any pathogen infection. Two promoters with β-glucuronidase reporter gene fusions were constructed. The first contained the flagellin sensing 2 gene promoter, whereas the second contained synthetic promoter containing four repeats of cis-acting elements from the pathogen-related protein 1 gene and two transcription enhancers from the 35S promoter. Transformed leaves were treated with a phytohormone salicylic acid to mimic the occurrence of biotic stress. Validation of reporter gene expression induced from both constructs in transformed potato leaves displayed an increase upon salicylic acid treatment. The results reflect that both constructs could serve in the production of potato biotic stress biosensors.

Keywords: FLS2 gene, pathogen infection, PR1 gene, synthetic promoter.

Received: September 28, 2019; Revised: April 30, 2020; Accepted: May 4, 2020; Prepublished online: September 3, 2020; Published online: August 4, 2020  Show citation