1.
First Report of Crown Gall of Kiwifruit (Actinidia deliciosa) Caused by Agrobacterium fabacearum in China and the Establishment of Loop-Mediated Isothermal Amplification Technique.
He, L, Shi, J, Zhao, Z, Ran, F, Mo, F, Long, Y, Yin, X, Li, W, Chen, T, Chen, J
International journal of molecular sciences. 2021;(1)
Abstract
Kiwifruit is moderately sweet and sour and quite popular among consumers; it has been widely planted in some areas of the world. In 2019, the crown gall disease of kiwifruit was discovered in the main kiwifruit-producing area of Guizhou Province, China. This disease can weaken and eventually cause the death of the tree. The phylogeny, morphological and biological characteristics of the bacteria were described, and were related to diseases. The pathogenicity of this species follows the Koch hypothesis, confirming that A. fabacearum is the pathogen of crown gall disease of kiwifruit in China. In this study, Loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) analysis for genome-specific gene sequences was developed for the specific detection of A. fabacearum. The detection limit of the LAMP method is 5 × 10-7 ng/μL, which has high sensitivity. At the same time, the amplified product is stained with SYBR Green I after the reaction is completed, so that the amplification can be detected with the naked eye. LAMP analysis detected the presence of A. fabacearum in the roots and soil samples of the infected kiwifruit plant. The proposed LAMP detection technology in this study offers the advantages of ease of operation, visibility of results, rapidity, accuracy and high sensitivity, making it suitable for the early diagnosis of crown gall disease of kiwifruit.
2.
Fine mapping and identification of the candidate gene BFS for fruit shape in wax gourd (Benincasa hispida).
Cheng, Z, Liu, Z, Xu, Y, Ma, L, Chen, J, Gou, J, Su, L, Wu, W, Chen, Y, Yu, W, et al
TAG. Theoretical and applied genetics. Theoretische und angewandte Genetik. 2021;(12):3983-3995
Abstract
Non-synonymous mutations in the BFS gene, which encodes the IQD protein, are responsible for the shape of wax gourd fruits. Fruit shape is an important agronomic trait in wax gourds. Therefore, in this study, we employed bulked segregant analysis (BSA) to identify a candidate gene for fruit shape in wax gourds within F2 populations derived by crossing GX-71 (long cylindrical fruit, fruit shape index = 4.56) and MY-1 (round fruit, fruit shape index = 1.06) genotypes. According to BSA, the candidate gene is located in the 17.18 Mb region on chromosome 2. Meanwhile, kompetitive allele-specific PCR (KASP) markers were used to reduce it to a 19.6 Kb region. Only one gene was present within the corresponding region of the reference genome, namely Bch02G016830 (designated BFS). Subsequently, BFS was sequenced in six wax gourd varieties with different fruit shapes. Sequence analysis revealed two non-synonymous mutations in the round wax gourd and one non-synonymous mutation in the cylindrical wax gourd. Quantitative real‑time PCR (qRT-PCR) analysis further showed that the expression of BFS in round fruits was significantly higher than in long cylindrical fruits at the ovary formation stage. Therefore, BFS is a candidate gene for determination wax gourd shape. The predicted protein encoded by the BFS gene belongs to the IQ67-domain protein family, which have the structural characteristics of scaffold proteins and coordinate Ca2+ CaM signaling from the membrane to the nucleus. Ultimately, two derived cleaved amplified polymorphic sequence (dCAPS) markers were developed to facilitate marker-assisted selection for wax gourds breeding.
3.
Evaluation of an Extraction Method for the Detection of GI and GII Noroviruses in Fruit and Vegetable Salads.
Cheng, D, Zou, S, Liao, N, Shi, X, Chen, J, Zhang, Y, Sun, L, Zhang, R
Journal of food science. 2018;(2):393-400
Abstract
Human norovirus (HuNoV) is a major foodborne virus causing gastroenteritis outbreaks in humans. Salad products can be vectors of transmission for foodborne viruses such as HuNoV when these products are contaminated naturally or through unsanitary food handling. Therefore, development of simple, reliable and sensitive techniques for the detection of HuNoV in salad products is needed to ensure food safety. The purpose of our study was to optimize a method for the detection of HuNoV in artificially contaminated salad products. To this end, 2 different kinds of salads (fruit salads and vegetable salads) were experimentally inoculated with HuNoV GI, HuNoV GII, and MS2 suspensions. The selected method was based on treatment with pectinase followed by Trizol-chloroform purification, and the recovery efficiencies were 6.07% to 26.52% for HuNoV GI and 5.54% to 37.36% for HuNoV GII. MS2 was used as the process control, and the recovery efficiencies for fruit salad and vegetable salad samples were 38.57% and 41.13%, respectively. The optimized method could be applied in diagnostic laboratories to identify NoV contamination in composite foods, such as salad products, should an event of foodborne outbreak occur.
4.
Alteration of tomato microRNAs expression during fruit development upon Cucumber mosaic virus and Tomato aspermy virus infection.
Feng, J, Lin, R, Chen, J
Molecular biology reports. 2013;(5):3713-22
Abstract
The economic importance of Solanaceae plant species is well documented, and tomato has become a model for fleshy fruit development and ripening studies. Plant microRNAs (miRNAs) are small endogenous RNAs that are involved in a variety of activities including plant development, signal transduction and protein degradation, as well as response to environment stress and pathogen invasion. Here in this study, we aimed at quantifying the expression alterations of nine miRNAs and target mRNAs in tomato flower and fruit development upon Cucumber mosaic virus (CMV) and Tomato aspermy virus infections. Three different CMV strains CMV-Fny, CMV-FnyΔ2b and CMV-Fny-satT1 were used in our investigation, and the miRNA/mRNA expression alterations were analyzed by real-time quantitative RT-PCR. The results shown the levels of several miRNA/mRNA pairs were increased upon virus infections. However, the increased level of individual miRNA differed for different virus strains, reflecting differences in severity of symptom phenotypes. The altered expression patterns of these miRNA/mRNA pairs and their predicted functions indicate the possible roles in flower and fruit development, and provide experimental data for understanding the miRNA-mediated phenotype alterations in tomato fruit.