Receptor Kinase, BIN1

Inventors: Joanne Chory and Jianming Li
Potential Uses: Plant Biology, Agriculture, Horticulture
Genetic modification of plants to increase BIN1 expression results in a variety of useful phenotypes such as increased yield, enhanced disease resistance, and increased biomass

The brassinosteroids are a unique class of biologically active natural products that possess plant steroidal hormone activity. The brassionosteroids can be used as plant protectants from both pesticide and environmental adversity and appear to be useful in insect control. Further, brassionsteroids can regulate some stage of the reproductive cycle of plants, thereby providing means to increase or decrease the reproductive process. They also appear to stimulate root growth. Historically brasinosteriods have not been used in actual agricultural applications due to the expense of producing them and difficulties in purification. The invention describes a novel steroid receptor kinase, Bin1, which is involved in the pathway for synthesis of the plant brassiosteroid, brassinolide. Overexpresiion of Bin1 in transgenic plants provides plants characterized as having enhanced disease resistance, increased plant yield or vegetative biomass and increased seed yield.