Evaluación del potencial biotecnológico de un promotor derivado del virus de la distorsión de la hoja de maracuyá (PLDV), un begomovirus que infecta maracuyá

Biotechnological advances in plants require the bioprospecting of new promoters for the gene s expression of agronomic interest,in particular, it is necessary to characterize new promoters with tissue-specific expression The objective of this research was to eval-uatetheexpressionactivityoftheAV1genepromoterthatcodesforthecapsidprotein(CP)ofthePassion fruit leaf distortion virus(PLDV) by means of transient tests of low pressure biobalistics. An analysis of the promoter region was carried out using bioinfor-matics  tools.  A  CP-PLDV-GUS  translational  fusion  was  constructed,  which  carries  the  promoter  region  of  the AV1gene  of  PLDV fused to the uidAreporter gene (GUS). CP-PLDV-GUS was bombarded on leaves of tobacco seedlings grown in vitro using a gene gun. As a positive control pBI121 carrying the GUS gene under the control of the 35S promoter of CaMV was used. It was carried out  11  repetitions  where  the experimental  unit  was  the  leaf and  the  response  variable  the  transient expression  of  the  GUS  gene represented by number of blue dots observed in the bombarded leaves. As a result, the non-parametric statistical analysis showed that there is sufficient sample evidence to confirm that both the AV1promoter of PLDV and 35S of CaMV exhibit similar expression activity. Finally, the promoter of the AV1gene of PLDV showed a strong activity of expression of the reporter gene in the leaf meso-phyll cells, which could be used to confer tissue-specific expression in transgenic plants.