Mechanisms of sugarcane response to herbivory

Abstract

Deciphering plant-insect interactions at the molecular level is one of the major topics of interest in contemporary plant biology research. In the last few years, various aspects of the plant response to insect damage have been investigated, including the characterization of direct and indirect responses, the regulation of gene expression resulting from insect attack and the signal transduction pathways. Such research has resulted in the proposal of new methods to enhance host resistance to insect pests, including the use of insecticidal genes that can be transferred by genetic engineering into target crops. By integrating the understanding of how plants react to insect damage with the techniques of molecular biology researchers should be able to increase the wide range of methods available for the control of insect pests. The sugarcane transcriptome project (SUCEST) has allowed the identification of several orthologues genes involved in the plant response to insect damage. In this paper we summarize several aspects of the complex interaction between plants and insects and describe the use of in silico analysis to provide information about gene expression in different sugarcane tissues in response to insect attack.

Survival of Bemisia tabaci and activity of plant defense-related enzymes in genotypes of Capsicum annuum L.

“…Previous studies have shown that CHI may be induced when resistant plants are infested by phytophagous insects, creating a protective barrier against the mechanic damage caused by the introduction of the stylet (Falco et al, 2001). CHI might also act on chitin, which suggests that chitinases might interfere with insect digestion and feeding (Jouanin et al, 1998).…”

“…In particular, phenylalanine ammonia lyase, polyphenoloxidase, chitinases, β-1,3-glucanases, peroxidases, lipoxygenases, and protease inhibitors have been documented as plant defense-related enzymes involved in response to phytophagous insects (Felton et al, 1994;Zhang et al, 2008). Other enzymes that may also affect feeding of herbivore insects are those that alter the digestive process, such as the arginases and the threonine deaminases that may act in insect gut by using the amino acids required for insect development (Falco et al, 2001;Mello and Silva, 2002;Chen et al, 2005). Particularly, studies on the interaction between B. tabaci and its host plant have been carried out in tomato and cassava, where resistant genotypes respond increasing the activity of various plant defense-related enzymes, such as β-1,3-glucanases, peroxidases, and chitinases when plants are exposed to B. tabaci (McKenzie et al, 2002;Binu and Palaniswami, 2006).…”

In silico evaluation of the Eucalyptus transcriptome

“…The abundance of ESTs in a cDNA library reflects the expression levels in the tissues used to extract the RNA (Okubo et al, 1992). The estimation of gene expression levels using the frequency of gene transcripts in non-normalized cDNA libraries has been done in several species, such as rice (Ewing et al, 1999), Medicago truncatula (Journet et al, 2002), sugarcane (Falco et al, 2001) and Schistosoma mansoni (Franco et al, 1997).…”

Resistance of Two Maize Landraces in Breeding Stage to the Attack of <i>Sitophilus zeamais</i>

“…Probably, there are resistance factors (chemical or physical characteristics of the grain) acting to inhibit or attract insects in some of the materials [20], therefore aiming to reduce the attack of insects. The plants develop various defense mechanisms which include physical and chemical barriers, and complex signaling pathways, among which are the induction of defense proteins, release into the environment of volatile compounds that attract predators of herbivorous insects and the synthesis of secondary metabolites [21] [22].…”