Anti-VEGFR2 protein accumulation under the influence of methyl jasmonate treatment in Brassica napus and Nicotiana benthamiana plants

This study was performed to investigate the effect of methyl jasmonate (MeJA) elicitor on green fluorescent protein (GFP) and Anti vascular endothelial growth factor (Anti-VEGFR2) proteins accumulation. A factorial experiment based on completely randomized design (CRD) was performed primarily to evaluate the effect of MeJA and days after inoculation on GFP expression in Brassica napus and Nicotiana benthamiana. RT-PCR and qRt-PCR assay was performed for GFP gene transcription confirmation at mRNA level. ELISA was done to investigate effect of the elicitor on GFP and Anti-VEGFR2 accumulation. The optimum treatment combination was then used to check Anti-VEGFR2 accumulation. GFP expression was significantly enhanced using M1D10 combination (the best treatment combination) in the two plants. This increase was greater in Brassica napus than in Nicotiana benthamiana. GFP and Anti-VEGFR2 transcript levels showed no significant differences between the optimized and control treatments in the qRT-PCR experiment, but the quantity of Anti-VEGFR2 protein accumulated in optimized treatments was higher than in control. A simple explanation for the improved accumulation of GFP and Anti-VEGFR2 would be a low ‘sink pressure’ on amino acid pools towards RuBisCO biosynthesis in RuBisCO-depleted leaves, and a resulting increased availability of metabolite and cellular resources for the production of less abundant (e.g., recombinant) proteins. This research showed that MeJA elicitor increased the accumulation of both proteins.