Rosa María Galaz-Avalos

Centro de Investigación Científica de Yucatán | CICY · Unidad de Bioquímica y Biología Molecular de Plantas

Cytokinins play a relevant role in flower and fruit development and plant yield. Strawberry fruits have a high commercial value, although what is known as the “fruit” is not a “true” botanical fruit because it develops from a non-reproductive organ (receptacle) on which the true botanical fruits (achenes) are found. Given cytokinins’ roles in botan...

Somatic embryogenesis (SE) is an excellent example of mass plant propagation. Due to its genetic variability and low somaclonal variation, coffee SE has become a model for in vitro propagation of woody species, as well as for large-scale production of vigorous plants that are advantageous to modern agriculture. The success of the large-scale propag...

Cytokinins (CK) are plant growth regulators involved in multiple physiological processes in plants. One less studied aspect is CK homeostasis (HM). The primary genes related to HM are involved in biosynthesis (IPT), degradation (CKX), and signaling (ARR). This paper demonstrates the effect of auxin (Aux) and CK and their cross talk in a Coffea cane...

Coffea arabica is one of the most important crops worldwide. In vitro culture is an alternative for achieving Coffea regeneration, propagation, conservation, genetic improvement, and genome editing. The aim of this work was to identify proteins involved in auxin homeostasis by isobaric tandem mass tag (TMT) and the synchronous precursor selection (...

The complex plant body is created by means of an elaborate system that dictates the differentiation of cells with distinctive features as well as proper growth and development. We have reviewed the literature-reported experimental evidence for post-translational modifications (PTM)s that modulate plant differentiation. We found that phosphorylation...

Despite the existence of considerable research on somatic embryogenesis (SE), the molecular mechanism that regulates the biosynthesis of auxins during the SE induction process remains unknown. Indole-3-acetic acid (IAA) is an auxin that is synthesized in plants through five pathways. The biosynthetic pathway most frequently used in this synthesis i...

Somatic embryogenesis (SE) is one of the most studied developmental processes due to its applications, such as plant micropropagation, transformation, and germplasm conservation. The use of massive techniques of sequencing, as well as the use of subtractive hybridization and macroarrays, has led to the identification of hundreds of genes involved i...

Jatropha curcas has been a promising crop for biofuel production for the last decade. However, the lack of resistant materials to diseases and improved quality of the oil produced by the seeds has restricted the use of this promising crop. The genetic modifications in the fatty acid pathway, as well as the introduction of resistance to different di...

Auxins are plant growth regulators that participate in a variety of biological mechanisms during the growth and development of plants. The most abundant natural auxin is indole-3-acetic acid (IAA). The physiological processes regulated by IAA depend on their temporal space accumulation in different tissues of a plant. This accumulation is regulated...

Plants have a high plasticity for cell differentiation that not only allow them to regenerate damaged parts of their body but under certain conditions, plant cells can regain totipotency and change their developmental fate to re-differentiate into a somatic embryo and finally a whole plant. The ability to change their cell fate and generate somatic...

Coffee is a very important commodity in the world. It is a perennial plant and as a consequence its genetic improvement had been difficult. The biotechnology, in particular somatic embryogenesis (SE) has helped to the propagation of commercial coffee cultivars. Along almost 50 years, different research groups around the world have developed uncount...

Somatic embryogenesis (SE) is a powerful tool for plant genetic improvement when used in combination with traditional agricultural techniques, and it is also an important technique to understand the different processes that occur during the development of plant embryogenesis. SE onset depends on a complex network of interactions among plant growth...

Somatic embryogenesis is a powerful biotechnological tool for the mass production of economically important cultivars. Due to the cellular totipotency of plants, somatic cells under appropriate conditions are able to develop a complete functional embryo. During the induction of somatic embryogenesis, there are different factors involved in the succ...

Knowledge on the biosynthetic pathways of the monoter­pene alkaloids is enormous, but little is known about their mechanism of transporting system from the plant cell. There is not concrete evi­dence confirming the role of ABC transporters in the secretion of monoterpene indole alkaloids (MIAs) in Catharanthus roseus. There­fore, in order to determ...

Most of the somatic embryogenesis (SE) process requires the presence, either before or during the embryogenic process, of at least one exogenous auxin. This exogenous auxin induces the presence of endogenous auxins, which appears to be essential for SE induction. We found that during the preincubation period of SE in Coffea canephora, there is an i...

Methyl jasmonate (MeJA) produces an important reduction in the accumulation of proteins related to energy metabolism. The treatment of hairy roots (HR) with MeJA increased the accumulation of H 2O 2 during the first 48 h and this H 2O 2 accumulation was also observed in isolated mitochondria. Peroxidase and catalase activities decreased in the pres...

The growth is a characteristic of each culture and it is determinate by the origin of the species, culture conditions, and type of culture. In this chapter, we make a comparison of the different growth parameters among three different species and three different types of cultures.

The somatic embryogenesis (SE) has been used as an important tool for the study of molecular events in plant cell differentiation. Some studies have revealed that suspensions of somatic embryos secrete a vast array of proteins that could be involved in the regulation of this process. Many of these molecules have been suggested to work as inductors...

Jasmonates are specific signal molecules in plants that are involved in a diverse set of physiological and developmental processes. However, methyl jasmonate (MeJA) has been shown to have a negative effect on root growth and, so far, the biochemical mechanism for this is unknown. Using Catharanthus roseus hairy roots, we were able to observe the ef...

Plants have evolved a variety of mechanisms for responding to environmental cues, which allows them to survive in the presence of limited resources or environmental stresses. One of the most significant growth adaptations plants have attained is tropism, a growth response that involves bending of plant organs toward or away from a stimulus. Roots e...

All the tissues cultures in vitro secrete a vast array of molecules into the culture media. The secretion of high molecular weight compounds, such as proteins, has showed an active role in different biological phenomena. Indeed, several reports have made allusion to the extracellular proteins as a pivotal point in the initiation of the signal casca...

The induction of several secondary metabolites in plants is one of the most commonly observed effects after the external addition of methyl jasmonate (MeJA). After the elicitation of Catharanthus roseus hairy roots with different concentrations of MeJA, changes in the accumulation of alkaloids such as ajmalicine, serpentine, ajmaline and catharanth...

The concentration of free and bound polyamines was studied during the somatic embryogenesis induction process in Coffea canephora explants. In the present study we show that when the induction of somatic embryogenesis in C. canephora is carried out under light conditions and in the presence of the plant growth regulator, benzylaminopurine, a cytoki...

Plant tissue culture (PTC) is a set of techniques for the aseptic culture of cells, tissues, organs and their components under defined physical and chemical conditions in vitro and controlled environment (Fig. 50.1). PTC technology also explores conditions that promote cell division and genetic re-programming in in vitro conditions and it is consid...

Genetic improvement of coffee, an important commercial crop, through classical breeding is slow and cumbersome. Biotechnology offers alternative strategies for generating new and improved coffee varieties, including those resistances to environmental extremes, pests, and diseases, low in caffeine, and with uniform fruit maturation. Large improvemen...

Alkaloids are one of the most diverse groups of secondary metabolites found in living organisms. The most economically important alkaloids are the bisindole vinblastine, and vincristine. Unraveling the complexity of the genetic, catalytic and transport processes of monoterpene indole alkaloids biosynthesis is one of the most stimulating intellectua...

Somatic embryogenesis is the process by which somatic cells, under induction conditions, generate embryogenic cells, which go through a series of morphological and biochemical changes that result in the formation of a somatic embryo. Somatic embryogenesis differs from zygotic embryogenesis in that it is observable, its various culture conditions ca...

Somatic embryogenesis (SE) provides a useful model to study embryo development in plants. In contrast to zygotic embryogenesis, SE can easily be observed, the culture conditions can be controlled, and large quantities of embryos can be easily obtained. In Coffea spp several model systems have been reported for in vitro SE induction. SE for coffee w...

Los alcaloides son uno de los grupos de metabolitos secundarios más diversos encontrados en los organismos vivos. Este grupo incluye alrededor de 12,000 productos, entre los cuales se encuentran los alcaloides indólicos, alcaloides derivados del triptofano que conforman alrededor de la cuarta parte de todos ellos. Los alcaloides se han reportado en...

In vitro cultures of hairy root derived from Catharanthus roseus accumulate higher levels of indole alkaloids than cell suspension cultures. Hairy roots were interconverted to undifferentiated cells by manipulation of the culture medium. When the concentration of micronutrients in the culture medium was five times that of Phillips and Collins (1979...