Abstract

VANEGAS ARAUJO, PABLO ANDRÉS; BLANCO MARTINEZ, JENNIFER TERESA  and  CHAPARRO-GIRALDO, ALEJANDRO. Cry1Ac Protein Expression in Tissues of Potato (Solanumtuberosum spp. Andígena) Transgenic Lines Var. Diacol Capiro. Acta biol.Colomb. [online]. 2010, vol.15, n.2, pp.101-114. ISSN 0120-548X.

The potato plant is the fourth most important crop in the world. In Colombia around 2.8 million tons are produced annually economically supporting 90000 families. In the country, the major economic impact in the crop is caused by Tecia solanivora that originates loses up to 100% in the tuber production. The genetic plant breeding related to the introduction of Cry genes which codify insecticidal crystal proteins is an alternative for reducing the insect attack in commercial crops. In this work, the insertion, transcription and expression of Cry1Ac gen was characterized in different tissues and three development stages of two transgenic lines of Solanum tuberosum variety Diacol Capiro that were previously transformed by Agrobacterium tumefaciens method. The characterization was realized by PCR, RT-PCR and ELISA techniques. The gen insertion and transcription was confirmed using primers for Cry1Ac gen that amplified a specific band of 766 bp. The protein expression levels were higher than 45 µg/g and were not significantly different between the analyzed lines nor the three development stages. Furthermore, taking into account some relevant phenotypic features, no significant differences were found between transgenic lines and controls. The results suggest that monitoring and biosecurity assays are necessary with this vegetal material because their high level expression inside all the tissues analyzed that could affect non-targeted insects.

Keywords : S. tuberosum; Diacol Capiro; Cry1Ac; molecular characterization; GM crops.

        · abstract in Spanish     · text in Spanish     · Spanish ( pdf )