9320083 Gordon Description: This project is for a collaborative research by two well known laboratories: Dr. Milton Gordon's Laboratory, University of Washington, Seattle, and Dr. S. Riazuddin's Laboratory at the Centre for Advanced Molecular Biology, University of Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan. The work seeks to develop plant transformation procedures which will be applied to chickpea for the expression of Bacillus thuringiensis pesticidal proteins possessing entomocidal properties against American bollworm (Heliothis armigera). The study will address three main objectives. Firstly, pesticidal genes identified in Bt isolates from Pakistani environments will be cloned in plant expression vectors under the control of specific promoters. Secondly, procedures will be developed for the transformation of chickpea by a reporter gene (GUS) using particle bombardment. Finally, these procedures will be applied to transform chickpea with Bt pesticidal genes and the transgenic plant will be examined for level expression of the transgene and insect resistance. Scope: The project will provide fund for a young scientist from Dr. Riazuddin Laboratory to spend several months at the University of washington to participate with Dr. Gordon in the experiments using facilities not available in Lahore. This collaborative research is expected to be quite beneficial to the two laboratories, and particularly useful in the efforts towards producing isect-resistant economic crops. ***
