In planta transformation of rice (<i>Oryza sativa</i>) using thaumatin-like protein gene for enhancing resistance to sheath blight

Abstract

Among the fungal diseases, sheath blight caused by Rhizoctonia solani Kuhn is one of the most important wide spread diseases found in all the rice plants (Oryza sativa) growing countries. The control of the disease with agricultural alternation and traditional breeding has not been successful so far. Application of fungicide is not recommended. Resistant genes which can cause immunity to the disease have not been found. D34 is a thaumatin-like protein (TLP) belonging to the group 5 of pathogen-related proteins (PRs). These proteins can probably change permeability of fungal membrane. In this research, an attempt was made to enhance the resistance to the sheath blight fungus on rice plant through the expression of TLP gene under the control of a CaMV35 promoter. To achieve this goal, rice plants (O. sativa) were transformed by the pAJ21-CaMV35S-tlpD34 construct via in planta method using Agrobacterium tumefaciens EHA101. The transformed plants were confirmed using polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplifying a 710 bp fragment of the cloned gene.

Keywords: In planta, pathogenesis-related protein, Rhizoctonia solani, rice, sheath blight, thaumatin-like protein, transformation