Generation of Transplastomic Tobacco Plants Expressing dsRNAs Against Hemipteran Targets for Plant Protection

SEGRETIN, MARÍA EUGENIA; BOCCARDO, NOELIA AYELEN; MIRKIN, FEDERICO GABRIEL; BRAVO-ALMONACID, FERNANDO FÉLIX

Córdoba Capital

Congreso; XVI Congreso Latinoamericano de Fisiología Vegetal; 2018

Sociedad Argentina de Fisiología Vegetal

Insect pests represent a serious threat to food safety. Several strategies have shown effective in mitigating crop losses but unfortunately, due to the appearance of resistant insects, new approaches are needed. The expression of double stranded RNAs (dsRNA) against insect targetsin plantsis an effectivestrategy for this matter. In particular, theexpression of dsRNAsin plastids allows high level protection against coleopterans and lepidopterans due to the accumulation of long dsRNAs, which are more effective to trigger silencing in the insect than short interfering RNAs. With the objective ofevaluating if this is a valid strategy against hemipteran pests, we developed genetic constructs to obtain transplastomic and nuclear transgenic plants to express dsRNAs with homology to Myzus persicae Mpc002 and v-atpase subunit E sequences, and Bemisia tabaci v-atpase subunit E sequence. For the plastome transformation we modified the plastid transformation vector pUTRGuspreviously developed in our laboratory, to adapt it for Golgen Gate cloning strategy for fast and easy assemblyofvectors design toexpress intron containing hairpins in plastids. We obtained transplastomic and nuclear transgenic plantsthat are being characterized at the molecular level.