Functional analysis of genes involved in rice disease resistance

Several plant and microbial genes that could confer disease resistance in transgenic rice plants are being cloned and characterized. We are currently constructing transgenic rice lines that overexpress the gene products, such as a galactinol synthase, a defensin, and a bacterial ACC deaminase. Subtractive hybridization of a rice cDNA library constructed from the Xanthomonas oryzae-infected ice leaves resulted in isolation of many inducible cDNA clones including a elongation factor EF2, a oryzain alpha, a catalase, a aldehyde dehydrogenase, a S-adenosylmethionine synthetase, a caffeic acid O-methyltransferase, a glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase, a light-regulated protein, nKY transcription factors, and a nucleotide diphosphate kinase. Some genes among those may be useful genetic sources for construction of disease resistant transgenic rice. Full lengths of the rice OsFIERG and a rice oryzain genomic clones were cloned, and serial deletion fragments of the promoter regions of these genes were fused with GUS reporter gene in pCAMBIA1201, respectively. Promoter activities of these constructs will be examined upon various stresses and Pathogen infections to obtain the pathogen specific inducible-promoter. This work was supported by a grant from BioGreen 21 Program, Rural Development Administration, Republic of Korea.