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Apoptosis and disease in plants
https://doi.org/10.1186/gb-spotlight-20010604-01
© BioMed Central Ltd 2001
- Published: 04 June 2001
Keywords
- Transgenic Plant
- Tobacco Plant
- Induce Cell Death
- Plant Infection
- Hypersensitive Response
The hypersensitive response (HR) of plants to pathogenic infection involves a form of programmed cell death, but the molecular mechanisms remain unclear. In the June 5 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Dickman et al. describe the use of transgenic plants expressing known anti-apoptotic genes from animals to explore the role of apoptosis in host defence (Proc Natl Acad SciUSA 2001, 98:6957-6962). They generated tobacco plants expressing human bcl-2, human bcl-xl, nematode ced-9 or baculovirus op-iap. All of the transgenes conferred resistance to fungal phytopathogens and to tomato spotted wilt virus. The anti-apoptotic transgenes also inhibited DNA laddering (a marker of apoptosis) following tobacco plant infection with necrotrophic fungi. This 'comparative pathobiology' approach demonstrates that plant-pathogen interactions induce cell death that resembles animal apoptosis. These transgenic plants will be important to studies of the mechanisms of plant cell death and to the development of disease-resistant crops.
References
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- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, [http://www.pnas.org/]
- Bcl-2 family proteins.Google Scholar
- bcl-x, a bcl-2-related gene that functions as a dominant regulator of apoptotic cell death.Google Scholar
- Caenorhabditis elegans gene ced-9 protects cells from programmed cell death.Google Scholar
- An apoptosis-inhibiting baculovirus gene with a zinc finger-like motif.Google Scholar
