title: Assessment of heat shock protein 70 induction by heat in alfalfa varieties and constitutive overexpression in transgenic plants.
abstract: Heat shock proteins (HSPs) are molecular chaperones involved in many cellular functions. It has been shown that mammalian cytosolic HSP70 binds antigenic peptides mediating the activation of the immune system, and that it plays a determining role in tumour immunogenicity. This suggests that HSP70 may be used for the production of conjugated vaccines. Human and plant HSPs share high sequence similarity and some important biological functions in vitro. In addition, plant HSPs have no endotoxic side effects. Extraction of HSP70 from plants for use as vaccine adjuvant requires enhancing its concentration in plant tissues. In this work, we explored the possibility to produce HSP70 in both transgenic and non-transgenic plants, using alfalfa as a model species. First, a transcriptional analysis of a constitutive and an inducible HSP70 genes was conducted in Arabidopsis thaliana. Then the coding sequence of the inducible form was cloned and introduced into alfalfa by Agrobacterium-mediated transformation, and the accumulation of the protein in leaf tissue of transgenic plants was demonstrated. We also tested diverse alfalfa varieties for heat-inducible expression of endogenous HSP70, revealing variety-specific responses to heat shock.
authors.affiliation: Department of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Sciences, University of Perugia, Perugia, Italy.
authors.forename: Nicoletta
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Ferradini
authors.affiliation: ALSIA- Research Center Metapontum Agrobios, S.S. Jonica 106 Km 448,2-75012 Metaponto, Italy.
authors.forename: Rina
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Iannacone
authors.affiliation: Department of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Sciences, University of Perugia, Perugia, Italy.
authors.forename: Stefano
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Capomaccio
authors.affiliation: Department of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Sciences, University of Perugia, Perugia, Italy.
authors.forename: Alessandra
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Metelli
authors.affiliation: ALSIA- Research Center Metapontum Agrobios, S.S. Jonica 106 Km 448,2-75012 Metaponto, Italy.
authors.forename: Nadia
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Armentano
authors.affiliation: ALSIA- Research Center Metapontum Agrobios, S.S. Jonica 106 Km 448,2-75012 Metaponto, Italy.
authors.forename: Lucia
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Semeraro
authors.affiliation: ALSIA- Research Center Metapontum Agrobios, S.S. Jonica 106 Km 448,2-75012 Metaponto, Italy.
authors.forename: Francesco
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Cellini
authors.affiliation: Department of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Sciences, University of Perugia, Perugia, Italy.
authors.forename: Fabio
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Veronesi
authors.affiliation: Department of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Sciences, University of Perugia, Perugia, Italy.
authors.forename: Daniele
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Rosellini
mesh_terms: D017360:Arabidopsis / Q000235:genetics; D018840:HSP70 Heat-Shock Proteins / Q000096:biosynthesis* / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D006358:Hot Temperature; D000455:Medicago sativa / Q000378:metabolism*; D030821:Plants, Genetically Modified / Q000378:metabolism*; D014158:Transcription, Genetic
chemical_list: D018840:HSP70 Heat-Shock Proteins