Enhancing Quality Attributes of Potato and Tomato by Modifying and Controlling their Oxidative Stress Outcome

General The final goal and overall objective of the current research has been to modify lipid hydroperoxidation in order to create desirable phenotypes in two important crops, potato and tomato, which normally are exposed to abiotic stress associated with such oxidation. The specific original objectives were: (i) the roles of lipoxygenase (LOX) and phospholipids hydroperoxide glutathione peroxidase (PHGPx) in regulating endogenous levels of lipid peroxidation in plant tissues; (ii) the effect of modified lipid peroxidation on fruit ripening, tuber quality, crop productivity and abiotic stress tolerance; (iii) the effect of simultaneous reduction of LOX and increase of PHGPx activities on fruit ripening and tuber quality; and (iv) the role of lipid peroxidation on expression of specific genes. We proposed to accomplish the research goal by genetic engineering of the metabolic activities of LOX and PHGPx using regulatable and tissue specific promoters, and study of the relationships between these two consecutive enzymes in the metabolism and catabolism of phospholipids hydroperoxides. USA Significant progress was made in accomplishing all objectives of proposed research. Due to inability to regenerate tomato plants after transforming with 35S-PHGPx chimeric gene construct, the role of low catalase induced oxidative stress instead of PHGPx was evaluated on agronomical performance of tomato plant and fruit quality attributes. Effects of polyamine, that protects DNA from oxidative stress, were also evaluated. The transgenic plants under expressing lipoxygenase (LOX-sup) were crossed with catalase antisense (CAT-anti) plants or polyamine over producing plants (SAM-over) and the lines homozygous for the two transgenes were selected. Agronomical performance of these line showed that low catalase induced oxidative stress negatively affected growth and development of tomato plants and resulted in a massive change in fruit gene expression. These effects of low catalase activity induced oxidative stress, including the massive shift in gene expression, were greatly overcome by the low lipoxygenase activity. Collectively results show that oxidative stress plays significant role in plant growth including the fruit growth. These results also for the first time indicated that a crosstalk between oxidative stress and lipoxygenase regulated processes determine the outcome during plant growth and development. Israel Regarding PHGPx, most of the study has concentrated on the first and the last specific objectives, since it became evident that plant transformation with this gene is not obvious. Following inability to achieve efficient transformation of potato and tomato using a variety of promoters, model plant systems (tobacco and potato cell cultures, tobacco calli and plantlets, and Arabidopsis) were used to establish the factors and to study the obstacles which prohibited the regeneration of plants carrying the genetic machinery for overproduction of PHGPx. Our results clearly demonstrate that while genetic transformation and over-expression of PHGPx occurs in pre-developmental tissue stage (cell culture, calli clusters) or in completed plant (Arabidopsis), it is likely that over-expression of this enzyme before tissue differentiation is leading to a halt of the regeneration process. To support this assumption, experiments, in which genetic engineering of a point-mutated PHGPx gene enable transformation and over-expression in plants of PhSPY modified in its catalytic site and thus inactive enzymatically, were successfully carried out. These combined results strongly suggest, that if in fact, like in animals and as we established in vitro, the plant PHGPx exhibits PH peroxidase activity, these peroxides are vital for the organisms developmental process.