ELUCIDATING PLANT PATHWAY FOR INSECT HORMONE BIOSYNTHESIS AND EMPLOYING PATHWAY ENGINEERING TO CREATE INSECT-RESISTANT CROPS

The overarching goal of this proposal is to create insect-resistant crop plants by producing a hormone insecticide, juvenile hormone (JH) III. Because crop plants do not naturally produce JH III, the plant pathway of JH III biosynthesis will be discovered in a JH III-producing plant Cyperusiria and then engineered into crop plants. We will pursue three specific objectives to support our goal. In Objective 1, the candidate genes encoding the enzymes that catalyze all five enzymatic steps--from farnesyl diphosphate to JH III--will be identified in a model JH III-producing plant, C. iria, through integrated functional genomics. In Objective 2, catalytic functions of the enzymes encoded by candidate genes will be determined through in vitro enzymatic characterization. In Objective 3, the reconstituted multi-gene JH III biosynthetic pathway will be transformed into tomato plants for constitutive production of JH III, and transgenic tomato plants will be evaluated for performance against selected insect pests.