Method for enhancing pathogen resistance in plants
AssigneeUniversity of South Carolina
InventorsGail J. Pruss, Vicki B. Vance
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Abstract
The present invention provides a method for inducing or enhancing resistance in plants by supplying to the plant a virally encoded booster sequence comprising the 5′ proximal region of the potyvirus genome or by supplying other sequences encoding suppressors of gene silencing alone or in combination. Supplying the booster sequence to a plant, by means of stable transformation into the genome of the plant or introduced by expression from a plant viral expression vector, induces or enhances resistance in a plant against a broad range of pathogens, including viral, fungal and bacterial infectious agents.
Claims12
A method of protecting tobacco plants from pathogens which comprises:
- a) transforming a tobacco plant cell with a functional gene that suppresses post transcriptional gene silencing (PTGS), said functional gene comprising a potyvirus P1/HC-Pro sequence operably linked to an inducible promoter,
- b) regenerating a transformed plant from said transformed cell;
- and
- c) selecting a transformed plant having enhanced resistance to at least one pathogen that elicits the systemic acquired resistance response.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.