Exploitation of genetic resources for the discovery of novel stress-related genes in Arabidopsis thaliana
Student name: Mr Vijyesh Sharma
Guide: Dr Anandita Singh
Year of completion: 2018
Host Organisation: Plant Molecular Biology Department, Delhi University
Supervisor (Host Organisation): Prof. Anil Grover
Abstract: Rise in temperature due to global warming has tipped the world’s food security, making heat and drought stress a challenge for crop productivity. Heat stress can disrupt cellular protein homeostasis by forming protein aggregates of native proteins that can cause lethality. For determining the function of a gene product in situ transfer-DNA (T-DNA) insertion knock out mutants were used for the study. Several stress marker genes participate in the heat, osmotic and salinity stress. Our study includes the different Stress Responsive Genes (SRG) mutant plants. To study the effect of SRG gene in HS, osmotic stress and salt stress, 11 srg mutant were analysed. Our data shows, some srg mutants were defective in osmotic stress and salt stress. In contrast the LAT assay could not show any defect in mutant compared to WT. Interestingly, the study also revealed differential growth and development pattern in srg mutants which might suggest the importance of SRG genes at early growth stage. Some srg mutants showed differing flowering pattern compared to WT, so we hypothesise that SRG genes might be involved in cross-talk pathway with flowering genes. The Hsp100 protein expression was found to be differentially regulated in different srg mutants under control, HS and recovery conditions compared to WT. srg7 mutant showed a tolerant phenotype in salinity stress, therefore we made over-expression plants and complementation line for further analysis.
Key words: Heat stress, stress responsive gene, abiotic stress, Arabidopsis, mutant, T-DNA
