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Background: Brown planthopper (BPH; Nilaparvata lugens) is one of the most serious pests of rice in the world. Insect‐resistant genetic engineering is a very effective technology to control BPH. The promoters and cis‐regulatory elements inducible by plant‐feeding insects are critical for genetic engineering of insect‐resistant crops. Results: In this study, we cloned a promoter Ptps31 and a 7 bp cis–regulatory sequence that up‐regulated downstream genes induced by BPH feeding. The promoter of OsTPS31 (Ptps31) unresponsive to physical damage but responsive to BPH feeding was cloned and functionally verified. The results showed that expression of the OsBPH14 gene driven by the promoter region from −510 to −246 bp in rice could significantly improve the resistance to BPH. The promoter region from −376 to −370 bp (TAGTGTC) was identified as a cis‐regulatory sequence related to BPH feeding induction of downstream gene expression. Conclusion: The findings provide a new promoter and a new cis‐regulatory sequence tool for the research on and application of rice BPH resistance genes, as well as a new perspective for functional analysis of the OsTPS31 gene. © 2023 Society of Chemical Industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Insect pests have a great impact on the yield and quality of crops. Insecticide applications are an effective method of pest control, however, they also have adverse effects on the environment. Using insect‐inducible promoters to drive insect‐resistant genes in transgenic crops is a potential sustainable pest management strategy, but insect‐inducible promoters have been rarely reported. In this study, we found rice allene oxide synthase gene (AOS, LOC_Os03g12500) can be highly upregulated following brown planthopper (Nilaparvata lugens Stål, BPH) infestation. Then, we amplified the promoter of OsAOS1 and the β‐ glucuronidase reporter gene was used to analyze the expression pattern of the promoter. Through a series of 5ʹ truncated assays, three positive regulatory regions in response to BPH infestation in the promoter were identified. The transgenic plants, P1R123‐min 35S and P1TR1‐min 35S promoter‐driven snowdrop lectin (Galanthus nivalis agglutinin, GNA) gene, demonstrated the highest expression levels of GNA and lowest BPH survival. Our work identified a BPH‐inducible promoter and three positive regions within it. Transgenic rice with GNA driven by OsAOS1 promoter and positive regions exhibited an expected lethal effect on BPH. This study proved the application potential of BPH‐inducible promoter and provided a novel path for the selection of insect‐resistant tools in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between plant functional traits and ecosystem function is a hot topic in current ecological research, and community-level traits based on individual plant functional traits play important roles in ecosystem function. In temperate desert ecosystems, which functional trait to use to predict ecosystem function is an important scientific question. In this study, the minimum data sets of functional traits of woody (wMDS) and herbaceous (hMDS) plants were constructed and used to predict the spatial distribution of C, N, and P cycling in ecosystems. The results showed that the wMDS included plant height, specific leaf area, leaf dry weight, leaf water content, diameter at breast height (DBH), leaf width, and leaf thickness, and the hMDS included plant height, specific leaf area, leaf fresh weight, leaf length, and leaf width. The linear regression results based on the cross-validations ( FTEI W - L , FTEI A - L , FTEI W - NL , and FTEI A - NL ) for the MDS and TDS (total data set) showed that the R 2 (coefficients of determination) for wMDS were 0.29, 0.34, 0.75, and 0.57, respectively, and those for hMDS were 0.82, 0.75, 0.76, and 0.68, respectively, proving that the MDSs can replace the TDS in predicting ecosystem function. Then, the MDSs were used to predict the C, N, and P cycling in the ecosystem. The results showed that non-linear models RF and BPNN were able to predict the spatial distributions of C, N and P cycling, and the distributions showed inconsistent patterns between different life forms under moisture restrictions. The C, N, and P cycling showed strong spatial autocorrelation and were mainly influenced by structural factors. Based on the non-linear models, the MDSs can be used to accurately predict the C, N, and P cycling, and the predicted values of woody plant functional traits visualized by regression kriging were closer to the kriging results based on raw values. This study provides a new perspective for exploring the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem function., Competing Interests: The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2023 Chen, Wang, Jiang, Li, Wang, Lv and Li.)