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Using plant hormone technology to enhance soybean biomass under environmental stresses
Jyan-chyun Jang, Horticulture and crop science John J. Finer, Horticulture and crop science Plant hormones are chemical compounds essential for growth, development, and environmental responses. Synthetic analogues of many plant hormones are widely used in agriculture and horticulture for a number of applications, including fertilizers. However, their costs can be high, residues can be problematic, and many of them are prohibitively expensive. Peptide hormones are small fragments of secreted proteins that are the most abundant hormones in mammals. While human peptide hormones have been used for therapeutic and health purposes, they have only recently been found in plants and have tremendous potential for new applications. The research team recently discovered that modifying the levels of two plant peptide hormones (GASA4 and GASA6) can enhance growth and increase the lifespan of genetically modified plants. This raises the possibility of using peptide hormone technology for enhancing plant biomass production, particularly from soybeans, and bioenergy production under environmental stresses. This project tested if GASAs can be used as new tools for crop improvement, with the aim of benefiting agriculture in Ohio and beyond. Using Arabidopsis thaliana (a small flowering plant) as a model, the team dissected the protein structure of molecules to determine the region that is important for protein function. After identifying a region critical for GASA hormone secretion, the team created different mutants that either underexpressed or overexpressed GASA4 and GASA6. While the underexpressed plants show only

Jyan-chyun Jang

subtle changes, the overexpressed plants display visible characteristics in growth and development. Overexpression of GASA4 led to higher biomass and late flowering, whereas overexpression of GASA6 resulted in smaller plants and early flowering. This is consistent with the hypothesis that GASAs can exert hormonal effects and alter the patterns of plant growth and development. To determine if GASA peptide hormones can be used for crop improvement, the team attempted to generate genetically modified, or transgenic, soybean plants that overexpress Arabidopsis GASA4 and GASA6. Seven transgenic GASA4 events were obtained i.e. DNA recombination in the plant cells. For unknown reasons, no transgenic events were recovered from GASA6. Researchers also isolated four native soybean GASA genes and made individual transformation constructs, i.e. genetically altered cell genomes. Work is in progress to deliver these overexpression constructs into soybean tissue and create stable transgenic plants that could be used to enhance biomass production. Together, these results suggest that GASA genes are potential new tools for crop improvement. While much of the results support the teams hypotheses, a few questions remain unanswered. Future work will continue to characterize the soybean GASA4 transgenic plants to determine their success in biomass production and stress tolerance. Because neither GASA4 nor GASA6 secreted efficiently into the cells, work is in progress to find a different strategy to monitor the hormones trafficking patterns in cells.

Peptide hormones are small fragments of secreted proteins that are the most abundant hormones in mammals.

www.oardc.ohio-state.edu/seeds SEEDS: The OARDC Research Enhancement Competitive Grants Program

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