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Hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) is an important ROS molecule (Reactive oxygen species) that serves as a signal of oxidative stress and activation of signaling cascades as a result of the early response of the plant to biotic stress. This response can also be generated with the application of elicitors, stable molecules that induce the activation of transduction cascades and hormonal pathways, which trigger induced resistance to environmental stress. In this work, we evaluated the endogenous H2O2 production caused by salicylic acid (SA), chitosan (QN), and H2O2 elicitors in Capsicum annuum L. Hydrogen peroxide production after elicitation, catalase (CAT) and phenylalanine ammonia lyase (PAL) activities, as well as gene expression analysis of cat1, pal, and pathogenesis-related protein 1 (pr1) were determined. Our results displayed that 6.7 and 10 mM SA concentrations, and, 14 and 18 mM H2O2 concentrations, induced an endogenous H2O2 and gene expression. QN treatments induced the same responses in lesser proportion than the other two elicitors. Endogenous H2O2 production monitored during several days, showed results that could be an indicator for determining application opportunity uses in agriculture for maintaining plant alert systems against a stress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Geminiviruses genome is a small, single strand DNA that replicates in the plant cell nucleus. Analogous to animal DNA viruses, Geminiviruses depend on the host replication machinery to amplify their genomes and only supply the factors required to initiate their replication. Consequently, Geminiviruses remove the cell-cycle arrest and induce the host replication machinery using an endocycle process. They encode proteins, such as the conserved replication-associated proteins (Rep) that interact with retinoblastoma-like proteins in plants and alter the cell division cycle in yeasts. Therefore, the aim of this work is to analyze the impact of Pepper Golden Mosaic Virus (PepGMV) Rep protein in mammalian cells. Results indicate that the pTracer-SV40:Rep construction obtained in this work can be used to analyze the Rep protein effect in mammalian cells in order to compare the cell cycle regulation mechanisms in plants and animals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]