#42: Screening of Agrobacterium for Plant Infiltration with a Synthetic Virus — Presentation Detail — Celebration of Scholars

Instructions

Student presentations must have a faculty sponsor.

Abstracts must include a title and a description of the research, scholarship, or creative work. The description should be 150-225 words in length and constructed in a format or style appropriate for the presenter’s discipline.

The following points should be addressed within the selected format or style for the abstract:

A clear statement of the problem or question you pursued, or the scholarly goal or creative theme achieved in your work.
A brief comment about the significance or uniqueness of the work.
A clear description of the methods used to achieve the purpose or goals for the work.
A statement of the conclusions, results, outcomes, or recommendations, or if the work is still in progress, the results you expect to report at the event.

Presenter photographs should be head and shoulder shots comparable to passport photos.

Additional Information

More information is available at carthage.edu/celebration-scholars/. The following are members of the Research, Scholarship, and Creativity Committee who are eager to listen to ideas and answer questions:

Jun Wang
Kim Instenes
John Kirk
Nora Nickels
Andrew Pustina
James Ripley

#42: Screening of Agrobacterium for Plant Infiltration with a Synthetic Virus

Name: Juan Gómez-Solis
Major: Biology & Spanish
Hometown: Kenosha
Faculty Sponsor:
Other Sponsors:
Type of research: SURE
Funding: SURE

Abstract

Potato Virus Y (PVY) is a potyvirus that affects solanaceous plants such as tobacco, peppers, potatoes, eggplants, and tomatoes, causing up to 80% crop loss. Multiple strains of PVY exist; however, in Wisconsin, PVY NO is the dominant strain partly due to its asymptomatic nature. Traditional examination of how PVY NO is asymptomatic in contrast to other strains with high sequence similarity is hindered by the toxicity of the genome in E. coli, a common lab organism for mutational studies. A study could be conducted by mutational analysis if a functional synthetic virus existed. This work focused on validating the infectivity of a previously created synthetic clone by screening different strains of Agrobacterium for infection in tobacco. Strain screening indicated that certain Agrobacterium strains containing the pSOUP-p19 plasmid, a plasmid that eases transformation into and maintenance of toxic plasmids in Agrobacterium, had successful colony growth. However, upon infection of tobacco plants, no PVY infections were detected. Future directions include continuing to screen Agrobacterium strains to develop a reliable method for infection. Eventual work will include mutational analysis to determine why PVY NO differs from other strains in symptom and infectivity.

Poster file