Resistance to an herbivore through engineered cyanogenic glucoside synthesis

The entire pathway for synthesis of the tyrosine-derived cyanogenic glucosi de dhurrin has been transferred from Sorghum bicolor to Arabidopsis thalian a. Here, we document that genetically engineered plants are able to synthes ize and store large amounts of new natural products. The presence of dhurri n in the transgenic A. thaliana plants confers resistance to the flea beetl e Phyllotreta nemorum, which is a natural pest of other members of the cruc ifer group, demonstrating the potential utility of cyanogenic glucosides in plant defense.