Speaker: Rita Salinas
Candidate for Bachelor of Science in Biology
Time: 3:35 PM
Supervisor: Dr. Allan Hook
Title: The Simultaneous Addition of Acetosyringone With Agrobacterium tumefaciens During Tissue Culture of Nicotiana tabaccum to Optimize Efficacy of Transformation

Abstract: Current research in genetic engineering of plants uses Agrobacterium tumefaciens to inoculate plant cells in tissue culture and insert a plasmid into the cells. It is understood that certain phenolic compounds, acetosyringone being one, increase the rate of transformation in which the plasmid leaves the bacterial cell and enters the plant cell. To date, no study has simultaneously added acetosyringone and Agrobacterium tumefaciens to plant tissue culture. It is hypothesized that there could be a possible increase in transformation rate for the tissue culture of Nicotiana tabaccum if this addition is done. To investigate this hypothesis we inoculated Nicotiana tabaccum tissue culture with a mixture of Agrobacterium tumefaciens along with different concentrations of acetosyringone and the transformation rate was then tested using an X-Gluc analysis and observing tissue callus formation on a nutrient plate containing kanamycin. Results indicated that the addition of 100 L of acetosyringone increased the rate of transformation compared to the control group. The present study suggests that increasing the amount of acetosyringone added in the process will therefore increase the transformation rate.