A peptide comprised of either a binary or a tertiary peptide, the peptide contains at least 4 amino acids and up to a maximum of 16 amino acids, comprised of 2 or 3 different regions, wherein the binary peptides have 2 different regions and the tertiary peptides have 3 different regions; wherein, the peptide can be cleaved by both an animal gut protease and an insect or nematode gut protease.

Disclosed are non-hypersensitive response eliciting peptides and weak hypersensitive response eliciting peptides that induce active plant responses, and that exhibit improved solubility, stability, resistance to chemical degradation, or a combination of these properties. Use of these peptides or fusion polypeptides, compositions, recombinant host cells or DNA constructs encoding the same, for modulating plant biochemical signaling, imparting disease resistance to plants, enhancing plant growth, imparting tolerance to biotic stress, imparting tolerance and resistance to abiotic stress, imparting desiccation resistance to cuttings removed from ornamental plants, imparting post-harvest disease or post-harvest desiccation resistance to a fruit or vegetable, or enhancing the longevity of fruit or vegetable ripeness are also disclosed.

Compositions and methods for conferring nematicidal activity to bacteria, plants, plant cells, tissues and seeds are provided. In particular, methods for killing or controlling a nematode pest population, particularly a Pratylenchus spp., e.g., Pratylenchus brachyurus, root knot nematode, reniform nematode, or Lance nematode population, are provided. The methods include contacting the nematode pest with a pesticidally-effective amount of a polypeptide comprising a nematicidal toxin, particularly a nematicidal toxin active against a Pratylenchus spp. nematode, e.g. Pratylenchus brachyurus. Further included are methods for increasing yield in plants by expressing the toxin of the invention.

Provided are methods and compositions to improve fungal disease resistance in various crop plants. Also provided are combinations of compositions and methods to improve fungal disease resistance in various crop plants.

The invention relates to identifying and evaluating target coding sequences for control of plant parasitic nematodes by inhibiting one or more biological functions, and their use. The invention provides methods and compositions for identification of such sequences and for the control of a plant-parasitic nematode population. By feeding one or more recombinant double stranded RNA molecules provided by the invention to the nematode, a reduction in disease may be obtained through suppression of nematode gene expression. The invention is also directed to methods for making transgenic plants that express the double stranded RNA molecules, and the plant cells and plants obtained thereby.

Engineered pesticidal polypeptides that are highly active against a wide range of pests and methods of making such polypeptides are disclosed. The nucleotide sequences encoding the pesticidal polypeptide can be used to transform various prokaryotic and eukaryotic organisms, which organisms can be used to produce the pesticidal polypeptides. The recombinant organisms and/or the polypeptides produced by the recombinant organisms can be used to control pests in various environments.

This disclosure concerns nucleic acid molecules and methods of use thereof for control of insect pests through RNA interference-mediated inhibition of target coding and transcribed non-coding sequences in insect pests, including pollen beetle. The disclosure also concerns methods for making transgenic plants that express nucleic acid molecules useful for the control of insect pests, and the plant cells and plants obtained thereby.

The present invention is directed to controlling pest infestation by inhibiting one or more biological functions in an invertebrate pest. The invention discloses methods and compositions for use in controlling pest infestation by feeding one or more different recombinant double stranded RNA molecules to the pest in order to achieve a reduction in pest infestation through suppression of gene expression. The invention is also directed to methods for making transgenic plants that express the double stranded RNA molecules, and to particular combinations of transgenic pesticidal agents for use in protecting plants from pest infestation.

The present invention relates to new methods to study and control the expression of plant genes, particularly nucleotide sequences located downstream from regions comprising binding sites for transcription factors, such as the cis-element translocon 1 (TL1) comprising GAAGAAGAA and similar sequences. The invention relates to isolated nucleotide sequences comprising a regulatory region comprising a promoter operably-linked to one or more upstream open reading frames (uORFs) and one or more downstream open reading frames (dORFs) encoding one or more functional polypeptides, including transcription factors such as TBF1, reporter polypeptides, and polypeptides conferring resistance to drugs, resistance of plants viral, bacterial, or fungal pathogens, and polypeptides involved in the growth of plants. Related aspects include the use of a region which encodes one or more polypeptides designated uORF1 and uORF2 from Arabidopsis plants, natural and synthetic variants of these polypeptides, and their homologues and orthologues isolated from other plant species, including crop plants, plus vectors, cells, plant propagation material, transgenic plants, and seeds comprising nucleic acids comprising said all or portions of said regulatory region. Other aspects relate to methods of using these regulatory elements to generate and screen for transgenic plants having improved resistance microbial and viral plant pathogens, and engineered cells and plants comprising these one or more of these genetic elements to facilitate the production of proteins for use in structure/function studies, in industrial, medical, and agricultural applications, particularly in the discovery of metabolic pathways involved in the and development of disease-resistant plants.

Compositions and methods for enhancing disease resistance in plants are disclosed.