Abstract
Agriculture productivity is severely hampered by soil salinity, drought and other environmental stresses. Studies on stress-resistant plants (halophytes, xerophytes, accumulating plants for specific toxic ions) have illuminated some mechanisms of stress tolerance in plants at metabolic or molecular levels, which gave some clues on how to genetically engineer stress-tolerant crops. With the isolation of more stress-responsive genes, genetic engineering with modified expression of stress responsive genes may be an effective way to produce stress-tolerant crops. In the present report, two genes (PEAMT and BADH) encoding the corresponding key enzymes for choline and glycine betaine (an important osmoprotectant) biosynthesis in plants were isolated in oilseed rape, an important oil crop in the world. Effects of salt stress on their expression were studied with quantitative PCR and their potential use in the genetic engineering of oilseed rape was discussed.
Abbreviations | ||
GB | = | glycine betaine |
NCBI | = | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
BLAST | = | basic local alignment search tool |
RACE | = | rapid amplification of cDNA ends |
CMO | = | choline monooxygenase |
BADH | = | betaine aldehyde dehydrogenase |
PEAMT | = | phosphoethanolamine N-methyltransferase |
EST | = | expressed sequence tag |
SMART | = | simple modular architecture research tool |
GSP | = | gene specific primers |
NGSP | = | nested gene specific primers |
Abbreviations | ||
GB | = | glycine betaine |
NCBI | = | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
BLAST | = | basic local alignment search tool |
RACE | = | rapid amplification of cDNA ends |
CMO | = | choline monooxygenase |
BADH | = | betaine aldehyde dehydrogenase |
PEAMT | = | phosphoethanolamine N-methyltransferase |
EST | = | expressed sequence tag |
SMART | = | simple modular architecture research tool |
GSP | = | gene specific primers |
NGSP | = | nested gene specific primers |
Acknowledgements
The complete nucleotide sequences of BnPEAMT and BnBADH have been deposited in the NCBI nucleotide sequence database; accession numbers are AY319479 and AY351634 respectively. This study was supported by the State Key Basic Research and Development Plan of China (Grant No.2001CB108).