Avaliação da expressão gênica da toxina da soja (SBTX) por indutores da defesa de plantas

Abstract

Soybean is a legume most commonly utilized in the world, whose use is justified by the high nutritional content of its grain, consisting mainly of proteins and lipids. The current estimate of global soybean production is 250,000 tons/year, but there are limiting factors of this production, such as the pest attack. The fungal diseases, for example, cause losses in soybeans around 4%, where 20% of these are derived from infection by Septoria glycines and Cercospora kikuchii. Thus, the search for alternative measures is increasing, particularly in reducing the use of pesticides, but for this it is important to understand the plant defense mechanisms. Soybean toxin (SBTX) is a protein purified from soybean seeds with activity against plant and human pathogenic fungi and neurotoxic action to rats and mice, hence the reason it received the name of toxin. SBTX shows a molecular mass of 44 kDa, composed of two subunits (17 and 27 kDa) encoded by distinct genes and it has been detected seeds, roots, stems and leaves. This study aimed to evaluate the gene expression profile of SBTX in soybean plants whose primary leaves were treated with elicitors (biotic and abiotic), using the real-time PCR technique, in an attempt to strength the physiological role of defense proposed for this protein. Therefore, salicylic acid, mechanic injury and Cercospora kikuchii spores were used as elicitors and it was measured the transcript levels of SBTX subunits. Induction responses were observed for both subunits of SBTX, but the gene expression profiles were different. For SBTX 27 kDa gene, the highest transcript level was detected when the treatment involved mechanic injury associated to salicylic acid, an increase of about 100 fold after 12 hours of treatment application. Nevertheless, for SBTX 17 kDa gene the induction response was much smaller, it was only around 10 times. The data together show that SBTX is an inducible protein by biotic and abiotic elicitors, reinforcing its physiological role of defense, which could eventually be used as biotechnological tool in order to mitigate losses caused by fungi.