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Updated: Jan 29, 2026

In vivo and In vitro Infection of Potato Roots with Plant Parasitic Nematodes for the Assessment of Induced Structural Changes
Published on: February 28, 2025
Soybean leghemoglobin targeted to potato chloroplasts influences growth and development of transgenic plants
A Chaparro-Giraldo1, R M Barata1, S M Chabregas1
1Departamento de Genética, Escola Superior de Agricultura 'Luiz de Queiroz', Universidade de São Paulo, Av. Pádua Dias,11, Caixa Postal 83, 13400-970 Piracicaba, SP, Brazil e-mail: mdcsilva@carpa.ciagri.usp.br Fax: +55-19-4336706, , , , , , BR.
Abstract:
Potato tubers were transformed with a chimeric gene made by the fusion of the soybean leghemoglobin encoding gene (lba) with the chloroplastic targeting sequence from Rubisco. This construct was placed under the control of the strong constitutive 35S promoter and the 3' nontranslated region of Rubisco from pea. Leghemoglobin expression on kanamycin-resistant plants was monitored by RT-PCR. Furthermore, immunodetection of subcellular fractions of transgenic plants revealed that leghemoglobin was imported and correctively processed inside the organelle. In addition, analysis of transgenic plants revealed reduced growth and decreased tuber production compared with the untransformed plants. It is suggested that leghemoglobin expression in potato chloroplasts interferes with aerobic metabolism, leading to physiological and morphological changes.
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