De novo biosynthesis of halogenated benzoxazinoids in <i>Nicotiana benthamiana</i>
Crop Improvement
Corn and wheat quietly defend themselves from insects and fungi using built-in chemical shields that scientists can now transplant into other crops — a step toward pest-resistant plants that need fewer pesticides in your food supply.
Some grasses like corn and wheat make their own natural bug repellents called benzoxazinoids. Scientists took the genetic instructions for making these chemicals and put them into tobacco plants, which normally can't make them at all. The tobacco plants then successfully produced these defense chemicals on their own, proving it's possible to give crops new protective abilities they weren't born with.
Key Findings
The complete biosynthetic pathway for halogenated benzoxazinoids was successfully reconstructed in Nicotiana benthamiana (a tobacco relative) through transient expression
The engineered plants produced detectable halogenated benzoxazinoid compounds de novo, confirming functional assembly of a multi-enzyme pathway across species
Halogen atoms were incorporated into the benzoxazinoid scaffold, expanding the chemical diversity of these plant defense compounds beyond what occurs in natural grass species
chevron_right Technical Summary
Scientists engineered a tobacco plant to produce halogenated benzoxazinoids — natural pest-fighting chemicals normally found in corn and wheat — from scratch, demonstrating that these defense compounds can be built in a plant that doesn't naturally make them.
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Tobacco is the common name of several plants in the genus Nicotiana of the family Solanaceae, and the general term for any product prepared from the cured leaves of these plants. Seventy-nine species of tobacco are known, but the chief commercial crop is N. tabacum. The more potent variant N. rus...