Plant defensins are a potential tool in crop improvement programs through biotechnology. Their antifungal action makes them attractive molecules for the production of transgenic plants. Information is currently lacking on what happens to the expression of defense genes in transgenic plants that overexpress a defensin. Here we show the relative expression of four defense-related genes: Mn-sod, PAL1, aos1 and HPL evaluated in two transgenic soybean events (Def1 and Def17) constitutively expressing the NmDef02 defensin gene from Nicotiana megalosiphon. The expression of these defense genes showed a differential profile in the transgenic events, with the increased expression of the aos1 gene and the repression of the Mn-sod gene in both events, when compared to the non-transgenic control. Furthermore, the expression of the PAL1 gene only increased in the Def17 event. The results indicate that although there were some changes in the expression of defense genes in transgenic plants overexpressing the defensin NmDef02; the morphoagronomic parameters evaluated were similar to the non-transgenic control. Understanding the molecular changes that occur in these transgenic plants could be of interest in the short, medium and long term.

植物防御素是通过生物技术进行作物改良计划的潜在工具。它们的抗真菌作用使它们成为生产转基因植物的有吸引力的分子。目前缺乏关于过度表达防御素的转基因植物中防御基因表达会发生什么情况的信息。在这里，我们展示了四种防御相关基因的相对表达：Mn-sod、PAL1、aos1和HPL，在两个转基因大豆事件（Def1 和 Def17）中评估，组成型表达来自巨虹吸烟草的NmDef02防御素基因。这些防御基因的表达在转基因事件中表现出不同的特征，随着aos1表达的增加基因和Mn-sod基因在两个事件中的抑制，与非转基因对照相比。此外， PAL1基因的表达仅在 Def17 事件中增加。结果表明，尽管过表达防御素NmDef02的转基因植物防御基因的表达发生了一些变化；评估的形态农艺学参数与非转基因对照相似。从短期、中期和长期来看，了解这些转基因植物中发生的分子变化可能很有意义。