Transgenic cotton expressing Allium sativum leaf agglutinin exhibits resistance to whiteflies and aphids without negative effects on ladybugs.

Autor: Najeebullah S; National Institute for Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering, College Pakistan Institute of Engineering and Applied Sciences (NIBGE-C, PIEAS), Faisalabad 38000, Pakistan; Boyce Thompson Institute, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA., Umer N; National Institute for Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering, College Pakistan Institute of Engineering and Applied Sciences (NIBGE-C, PIEAS), Faisalabad 38000, Pakistan., Zahra Naqvi R; National Institute for Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering, College Pakistan Institute of Engineering and Applied Sciences (NIBGE-C, PIEAS), Faisalabad 38000, Pakistan., Arshad M; National Institute for Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering, College Pakistan Institute of Engineering and Applied Sciences (NIBGE-C, PIEAS), Faisalabad 38000, Pakistan., Jander G; Boyce Thompson Institute, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA., Asad S; National Institute for Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering, College Pakistan Institute of Engineering and Applied Sciences (NIBGE-C, PIEAS), Faisalabad 38000, Pakistan., Mukhtar Z; National Institute for Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering, College Pakistan Institute of Engineering and Applied Sciences (NIBGE-C, PIEAS), Faisalabad 38000, Pakistan., Asif M; National Institute for Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering, College Pakistan Institute of Engineering and Applied Sciences (NIBGE-C, PIEAS), Faisalabad 38000, Pakistan. Electronic address: asif.biosafety@gmail.com.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: Gene [Gene] 2025 Jan 15; Vol. 933, pp. 148926. Date of Electronic Publication: 2024 Sep 08.
DOI: 10.1016/j.gene.2024.148926
Abstrakt: Cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.) is of great economic importance as a cultivated crop in many parts of the world. In addition to being a pillar of the textile industry, cotton and its byproducts are used for livestock feed, seed oil, and other products. Bacillus thuringiensis crystal toxin (Bt) expression in cotton provides effective protection against chewing insects but does not defend plants from piercing/sucking insect pests. With the aim to create transgenic plants with resistance against piercing/sucking pests, we used Agrobacterium-mediated genetic transformation of cotton cultivar Coker 312 to express the Allium sativum leaf agglutinin (ASLA) gene from the phloem-specific rolC promoter. The ASLA transgene was stably inherited and showed Mendelian segregation in the T1 generation. Transgenic lines, expressing the ASLA gene, showed explicit resistance against major sap-sucking pests. Green peach aphid (Myzus persicae Sulzer) choice assays showed that 75% of aphids preferred untransformed cotton plants relative to those expressing the ASLA gene. In detached leaf bioassays, plants expressing ASLA caused 82% aphid mortality and 44-53% reduction in fecundity. Clip cage bioassays with whiteflies (Bemisia tabaci Gennadius) showed 74-82% mortality and 44-60% decrease in fecundity due to ASLA gene expression. In whole plant bioassays, whiteflies showed 77% mortality and a 54% decrease in fecundity on ASLA transgenics. Importantly, we did not observe a negative effect of the ASLA gene on ladybugs (Coccinella septempunctata) that consumed these whiteflies. Together, our findings demonstrate the potential of ASLA-transgenic cotton for providing protection against two devastating insect pests, whiteflies and aphids. The ASLA-transgenic cotton appears promising for direct commercial cultivation besides serving as a potential genetic resource in recombination breeding.
Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
(Copyright © 2024. Published by Elsevier B.V.)
Databáze: MEDLINE
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