International Journal of Molecular Sciences Article Chitin Biosynthesis Inhibition of Meloidogyne incognita by RNAi-Mediated Gene Silencing Increases Resistance to Transgenic Tobacco Plants 1, 1, 1 1 Vimalraj Mani y, Chinreddy Subramanyam Reddy y , Seon-Kyeong Lee , Soyoung Park , Hyoung-Rai Ko 2, Dong-Gwan Kim 3 and Bum-Soo Hahn 4,* 1 Department of Agricultural Biotechnology, National Institute of Agricultural Sciences, Rural Development Administration, Jeonju 54874, Korea;
[email protected] (V.M.);
[email protected] (C.S.R.);
[email protected] (S.-K.L.);
[email protected] (S.P.) 2 Crop Protection Division, National Institute of Agricultural Sciences, Rural Development Administration, Wanju 55365, Korea;
[email protected] 3 Department of Bio-Industry and Bio-Resource Engineering, Sejong University, Seoul 05006, Korea;
[email protected] 4 National Agrobiodiversity Center, National Institute of Agricultural Sciences, Rural Development Administration, Jeonju 54874, Korea * Correspondence:
[email protected]; Tel.: +82-63-238-4930 These Authors contributed equally. y Received: 23 July 2020; Accepted: 8 September 2020; Published: 10 September 2020 Abstract: Meloidogyne incognita is a devastating plant parasitic nematode that causes root knot disease in a wide range of plants. In the present study, we investigated host-induced RNA interference (RNAi) gene silencing of chitin biosynthesis pathway genes (chitin synthase, glucose-6-phosphate isomerase, and trehalase) in transgenic tobacco plants. To develop an RNAi vector, ubiquitin (UBQ1) promoter was directly cloned, and to generate an RNAi construct, expression of three genes was suppressed using the GATEWAY system. Further, transgenic Nicotiana benthamiana lines expressing dsRNA for chitin synthase (CS), glucose-6-phosphate isomerase (GPI), and trehalase 1 (TH1) were generated.