Expression of N-acylhomoserine lactone lactonase genes in Arabidopsis thaliana

In Gram-negative bacteria, N-acyl homoserine lactones (AHLs) are the key signalling molecules to sense the population density in a phenomenon coined as quorum sensing (QS), or simply known as cell-to-cell communication (Williams et al., 2000). The QS is responsible to regulate biofilm formation, virulence gene expression, and other important biochemical processes at certain population density threshold. Phytopathogens such as Pseudomonas syringae (potato, tomato, and Arabidopsis bacterial rot), Erwiniammallotivora (papaya dieback), E.chrysanthemi (pineapple bacterial rot) and Ralstonia solanacearum (banana bacterial disease) are all in this category of bacteria that use lactones to communicate. On the other hand, AHL-lactonases are a group of enzyme naturally produced by certain bacteria (i.e Bacillus spp.) that target the lactones and capable of silencing communication in competitor bacteria (Wang et al., 2004). Knowing this work of nature, lactonases can be utilized to curb wide plant diseases when produced in transgenic plants. Several studies that involve incorporation of lactonase gene into foreign organisms, either for recombinant protein production or resistant transgenic plant development, have presented promising results. A couple of studies discussed transformation of lactonase gene conferred tobacco resistance against Erwinia carotovora infection (Dong et al., 2001) and recombinant lactonase could attenuate Aeromonas hydrophila infection in Zebra fish (Cao et al., 2012). (Copied from article)