Production of Volatile Moth Sex Pheromones in Transgenic Nicotiana benthamiana Plants

Plant-based bioproduction of insect sex pheromones has been proposed as an innovative strategy to increase the sustainability of pest control in agriculture. Here, we describe the engineering of transgenic plants producing (Z) -11-hexadecenol (Z11-16OH) and (Z) -11-hexadecenyl acetate (Z11-16OAc), t...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Biodesign research Vol. 2021; p. 9891082
Main Authors:	Mateos-Fernández, Rubén, Moreno-Giménez, Elena, Gianoglio, Silvia, Quijano-Rubio, Alfredo, Gavaldá-García, Jose, Estellés, Lucía, Rubert, Alba, Rambla, José Luis, Vazquez-Vilar, Marta, Huet, Estefanía, Fernández-del-Carmen, Asunción, Espinosa-Ruiz, Ana, Juteršek, Mojca, Vacas, Sandra, Navarro, Ismael, Navarro-Llopis, Vicente, Primo, Jaime, Orzáez, Diego
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	English
Published:	AAAS 2021 American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
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Summary:	Plant-based bioproduction of insect sex pheromones has been proposed as an innovative strategy to increase the sustainability of pest control in agriculture. Here, we describe the engineering of transgenic plants producing (Z) -11-hexadecenol (Z11-16OH) and (Z) -11-hexadecenyl acetate (Z11-16OAc), two main volatile components in many Lepidoptera sex pheromone blends. We assembled multigene DNA constructs encoding the pheromone biosynthetic pathway and stably transformed them into Nicotiana benthamiana plants. The constructs contained the Amyelois transitella AtrΔ11 desaturase gene, the Helicoverpa armigera fatty acyl reductase HarFAR gene, and the Euonymus alatus diacylglycerol acetyltransferase EaDAct gene in different configurations. All the pheromone-producing plants showed dwarf phenotypes, the severity of which correlated with pheromone levels. All but one of the recovered lines produced high levels of Z11-16OH, but very low levels of Z11-16OAc, probably as a result of recurrent truncations at the level of the EaDAct gene. Only one plant line (SxPv1.2) was recovered that harboured an intact pheromone pathway and which produced moderate levels of Z11-16OAc (11.8 μ g g -1 FW) and high levels of Z11-16OH (111.4 μ g g -1 ). Z11-16OAc production was accompanied in SxPv1.2 by a partial recovery of the dwarf phenotype. SxPv1.2 was used to estimate the rates of volatile pheromone release, which resulted in 8.48 ng g -1 FW per day for Z11-16OH and 9.44 ng g -1 FW per day for Z11-16OAc. Our results suggest that pheromone release acts as a limiting factor in pheromone biodispenser strategies and establish a roadmap for biotechnological improvements.
Bibliography:	ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 Ismael Navarro is employed by the company Ecología y Protección Agrícola S.L. The remaining authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
ISSN:	2693-1257 2693-1257
DOI:	10.34133/2021/9891082