Abstract
Terpenes play an important role in plant–insect relationships, and these relationships can potentially be modified by altering the profile of terpenes emitted from plants using metabolic engineering methods. Transgenic plants generated by employing such methods offer the prospect of low-cost sustainable pest management; in this regard, we used chloroplast targeting and cytosolic mevalonic acid pathway enhancement in this study to investigate the interaction of santalenes and bergamotene with insects. The santalene- and bergamotene-emitting transgenic tobacco plants thus generated were utilized to study host preference in the green peach aphid (Myzus persicae (Sulzer)). The results showed that co-expression of either 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl-CoA reductase (HMGR) or truncated HMGR with santalene synthase led to the production of higher amounts of santalenes and bergamotene in transgenic tobacco plants, and that these santalene- and bergamotene-emitting plants were attractive to green peach aphids. We accordingly propose that such transgenic plants may have potential application in pest management as a trap crop to prevent green peach aphid infestation of wild-type tobacco plants.
Highlights
Volatile terpenoids play important roles in plant defense, as they normally act as deterrents or repellents against herbivorous insect, or can function as attractants to attract carnivorous insect [1,2,3,4,5,6]
The results showed that co-expression of either hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl-CoA reductase (HMGR) or truncated HMGR (tHMGR) with santalene synthase (SaSSy) enhanced the production of santalenes and bergamotene in tobacco plants; transgenic tobacco plants emitting santalenes and bergamotene showed increased attraction to the green peach aphid M. persicae (Sulzer), indicating that these transgenic tobacco plants have considerable potential as a trap crop to protect wild-type tobacco from M. persicae feeding damage
farnesyl diphosphate synthase (FPS), SaSSy, linalool synthase transit peptide (LTP), and RbcS secretion signal (RTP) sequences were inserted into pCambia1300-green fluorescent protein signal (GFP) vectors to generate 1300-35SP-LTP-FPS-GFP, 1300-35SP-LTP-SaSSy-GFP, 1300-35SP-RTP-FPS-GFP, and 1300-35SP-RTP-SaSSy-GFP vectors, respectively (S1 Fig)
Summary
Volatile terpenoids play important roles in plant defense, as they normally act as deterrents or repellents against herbivorous insect, or can function as attractants to attract carnivorous insect [1,2,3,4,5,6]. The application of insecticides is a common and effective method of pest management, these chemicals can have undesirable side effects on the environment, promote rapid evolution of resistance in pests, and can reduce predator populations [7]. Previous studies have demonstrated that transgenic plants in which emitted volatiles had been modified by metabolic engineering can be used to deter feeding by hornworms [8], decrease aphid colonization [9,10,11], or attract mite predators of infesting arthropods [12]. Modification of plant volatile terpenoids through metabolic engineering has considerable potential to lower the cost of pest management and facilitate more sustainable agricultural practices by reducing reliance on chemical pesticide usage [13].
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