Studying osm1/ syp61 gene in arabidopsis under drought stress

By: Abobakir Elhaj

Horticulture Department - Faculty of Agriculture - University of Tripoli

Issue: Vol 20 |First Issue | 2014

article language: English

Abstract:

Drought is a major abiotic stress that causes a reduction in plant growth and yields of agricultural crops. Naturally, Plants differ in their susceptibility to drought adaptation and tolerance and research confirmed that many genes and transcription factors are involved in the response to water deficit. I tested Arabidopsis OSM1 (for osmotic stress-sensitive mutant 1) (At1g28490) gene- which is similar to SYP61 (SYNTAXIN OF PLANTS 61) -under drought stress for the first time in plants grown on soil. The investigations included wild type plants and osm 1 mutant line (SALK_107167) subjected to drought. The sequence analysis showed that the T-DNA in this mutant is inserted in the promoter and in the correct site as reported by the database but showed smaller product size than the expected confirming missing of 86 bases at the left border of the T-DNA. Genotyping investigations showed that the lines segregated out according to the mendelian bases. The mutant plants were significantly more sensitive to wilting when grown with limited soil moisture compared to wild-type plants but plant survival was not affected. These results indicate that this gene may be involved in drought stress response and wider experimentation is needed to include transcript accumulations under such kind of stress in parallel with the use of a mutant that carries a T-DNA within the gene.