THE N GENE OF TOBACCO CONFERS RESISTANCE TO TOBACCO MOSAIC-VIRUS IN TRANSGENIC TOMATO

It has been proposed that cloned plane disease resistance genes could be transferred from resistant to susceptible plant species to control important crop plant diseases. The recently cloned N gene of tobacco c onfers resistance to the viral pathogen, tobacco mosaic virus. We gene rated transgenic tomato plants bearing the N gene and demonstrate that N confers a hypersensitive response and effectively localizes tobacco mosaic virus to sites of inoculation in transgenic tomato, as it does in tobacco. The ability to reconstruct the N-mediated resistance resp onse to tobacco mosaic virus in tomato demonstrates the utility of usi ng isolated resistance genes to protect crop plants from diseases, and it demonstrates that all the components necessary for N-mediated resi stance are conserved in tomato.