EXPRESSION OF TOMATO PATHOGENESIS RELATED GENES IN RESPONSE TO TOBACCO MOSAIC VIRUS Authors: A. Abdelkhalek Journal: Journal of Animal and Plant Sciences (JAPS) ISSN: 1018-7081 (Print), 2309-8694 (Online) Volume: 29 Issue: 6 Pages: 1596-1602 Year: 2019 DOI: NA URL: https://doi.org/NA Publisher: Pakistan Agricultural Scientists Forum Abstract:

Tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) causes severe damages and economic losses of tomato crop production and quality worldwide. In the current study, the nucleotide sequence with NCBI-BLAST and phylogenetic analysis for the movement protein gene revealed that the Egyptian TMV isolate (Acc# MG264131) exhibited 99% identity with that of a Slovenian isolate (Acc# KY810785). Moreover, the transcription profiles of PR1, PR2, PR3, PR5 and PR7 genes in TMV-infected tomato tissues were analysed using semi-quantitative RT-PCR technique. Compared to mock-inoculated plants, the statistical analysis revealed significant changes in the relative expression level of both PR2 and PR7 at the two intervals 6 and 15 days, post-inoculation with 32.3 and 34.7-fold change respectively. A significant change in transcription level of the two genes suggests that they play an essential role in the tomato defence system and could be disease-specific genes induced with the TMV infection. Based on the data obtained in this study and the previous studies, the down-regulation of PR2 and/or overexpression of PR7 in tomato plants could provide new insights in developing efficient strategies for reducing the tomato susceptibility to TMV infection.

Keywords: Tomato; TMV; Pathogen-related protein, RT-PCR