biologia plantarum

Biologia plantarum 35:131, 1993 | DOI: 10.1007/BF02921137

PSTV infection in tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum L.) transformed with PSTV cDNA

J. Matoušek¹, S. Rakouský¹, L. Trněná¹, D. Riesner²

¹ Institute of Plant Molecular Biology, Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences, České Budějovice, Czech Republic

² Institute of Physical Biology, Düsseldorf University, Düsseldorf, Germany

Tobacco cv. White Burley was transformed with disarmed expression vector pCB1314 containing dimeric cDNA of potato spindle tuber viroid (PSTV, severe strain) in plus orientation regulated from the mannopine promoter. Amount of PSTV specific (-) and (+) sequences and PSTV circular forms was measured in transformed tobacco stock and compared with PSTV content in untransformed tomato and tobacco grafts. It follows from the results that lower rate of accumulation of PSTV in tobacco as compared with tomato is due to less intensive viroid transportation through the cytoplasm and/or cell to cell moverment, whereas both, viroid replication and processing showed comparable characteristics in tomato and tobacco with respect to accumulation of minus and plus strands and circular forms in infected tissues. Despite of accumulation of viroid in comparable amount in both transformed tobacco and infected tomato, no expression of any morphological symptom of disease was observed in transgenic tobacco.

Received: November 28, 1991; Accepted: January 15, 1992; Published: March 1, 1993  Show citation