Plant, Animal & Microbe Genomes X Conference Plant, Animal & Microbe Genomes X ConferenceJanuary 12-16, 2002
Town & Country Convention Center
San Diego, CA
Workshop: Arabidopsis
Glucosinolates are naturally occurring amino acid derivatives that are believed to play important plant defense roles. Arabidopsis thaliana contains a large amount of variation for glucosinolate structure, amount and catabolism. I am utilizing this natural variation in conjunction with metabolomics to identify the genes that control the inter-specific variation in biosynthesis, regulation and catabolism of Arabidopsis glucosinolates. The genetic tools developed to identify these genes are then used to test the role that each of these genes plays in regulating resistance to various insect herbivores. The use of natural variation has identified a number of biosynthetic loci that control the type and amount of glucosinolates produced. To date, we have been able to clone and characterize five the six genes that control glucosinolate type in Arabidopsis leaves. Natural variation has also enabled the cloning and characterization of a gene that regulates the type of glucosinolate breakdown product formed. Finally, a number of loci have been identified that are involved in controlling the induction of aliphatic and indolic glucosinolates by methyl jasmonate. The glucosinolate breakdown locus will be used to illustrate how natural variation and metabolomics are combined to identify and clone genes from Arabidopsis. This will then be expanded to show how these genetic tools are being used to show that variable specificity glucosinolate breakdown and catabolism appears to be important in generating variable levels of defense against generalist but not specialist insect herbivory. This suggests that glucosinolate variation may be ecologically important in Arabidopsis.