American Society of Plant Biologists
Northeastern Sectional Meeting, June 3-4, 2005
Analyzing the Function
of the Aop1 Gene by Creating a Knockout Plant in Arabidopsis
thaliana using the Technique of RNAi. K. Kovac, N. Alvarado, and Y. Kang. Biology Dept. Iona College, New Rochelle, NY 10801.
Glucosinolates are
secondary metabolites that are the main components of the
glucosinolate-myrosinase system, which provides plants with an effective
defense against herbivores and pathogens.
Plants containing glucosinolates such as broccoli, cauliflower, and
collard, have been linked to cancer prevention because of their
chemoprotective attributes. The Aop1
gene product is thought to be similar in function to the products of the Aop2,
Aop3, and Cyp79 genes, which express proteins that are
involved in the production of glucosinolates. However, the Aop1 gene has not yet been studied and
its function is not known. We will
attempt to determine the function of the Aop1 gene by creating
knockout plants in Arabidopsis thaliana. A. thaliana is a member of the mustard family and its
entire genome has been sequenced and mapped. We have taken advantage of the known genome sequence to
create knockout mutants using RNAi (RNA interference). We have also obtained T-DNA mutants
containing insertions in the Aop1 gene. We believe that the Aop1 gene is useful to study and
may provide information for the advancement in understanding of the
function of glucosinolates. Plants,
in which Aop1 gene expression has been removed, will be grown to
maturity and compared to wild type plants.
Observations will be made focusing on the differences between the
two plant types in phenotype and diagnostic test results, and a proposal
for the function of the Aop1 gene will be made. Early results (presented here) using
T-DNA mutants suggest that the Aop1 mutants may display a phenotype
of curled leaves and may be more prone to herbivore attack.