Constitutive Expression of the Barley Dehydrin Gene aba2 Enhances Arabidopsis Germination in Response to Salt Stress

Calestani, Cristina; Moses, Meena S.; Maestri, Elena; Marmiroli, Nelson; Bray, Elizabeth A.

doi:10.4081/pb.2015.5826

Open AccessArticle

Constitutive Expression of the Barley Dehydrin Gene aba2 Enhances Arabidopsis Germination in Response to Salt Stress

by

Cristina Calestani

^1,2,3,*,

Meena S. Moses

^1,4,

Elena Maestri

²,

Nelson Marmiroli

² and

Elizabeth A. Bray

¹

Department of Botany and Plant Sciences, University of California, Riverside, CA 92521, USA

²

Department of Biosciences, University of Parma, 43121 Parma, Italy

³

Department of Biology, Valdosta State University, 1500 N. Patterson St., Valdosta, GA 31698, USA

⁴

EMD Millipore Corporation, Temecula, CA 92590, USA

^*

Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.

Int. J. Plant Biol. 2015, 6(1), 5826; https://doi.org/10.4081/pb.2015.5826

Submission received: 23 January 2015 / Revised: 22 May 2015 / Accepted: 22 May 2015 / Published: 30 October 2015

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Abstract

Dehydrins (DHNs) are a sub-family of the late embryogenesis abundant proteins generally induced during development of desiccation tolerance in seeds and water deficit or salinity stress in plants. Nevertheless, a detailed understanding of the DHNs function is still lacking. In this work we investigated the possible protective role during salt stress of a Dhn from Hordeum vulgare (L.), aba2. The coding sequence of the aba2 gene was constitutively expressed in transgenic lines of Arabidopsis thaliana (L.). During salt stress conditions germination rate, cotyledon expansion and greening were greatly improved in the transgenic lines as compared to the wild type. Between 98 and 100% of the transgenic seeds germinated after two weeks in media containing up to 250 mM NaCl, and 90% after 22 days at 300 mM NaCl. In conditions of 200 mM NaCl 93% of the transgenic cotyledons had greened after two weeks, outperforming the wild type by 45%. Our study provides further evidence that DHNs have an important role in salt stress tolerance. The production of plants constitutively expressing DHNs could be an effective strategy to improve plant breeding programs.

Keywords: dehydrin; late embryogenesis abundant; germination; salt stress; transgenic plant

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MDPI and ACS Style

Calestani, C.; Moses, M.S.; Maestri, E.; Marmiroli, N.; Bray, E.A. Constitutive Expression of the Barley Dehydrin Gene aba2 Enhances Arabidopsis Germination in Response to Salt Stress. Int. J. Plant Biol. 2015, 6, 5826. https://doi.org/10.4081/pb.2015.5826

AMA Style

Calestani C, Moses MS, Maestri E, Marmiroli N, Bray EA. Constitutive Expression of the Barley Dehydrin Gene aba2 Enhances Arabidopsis Germination in Response to Salt Stress. International Journal of Plant Biology. 2015; 6(1):5826. https://doi.org/10.4081/pb.2015.5826

Chicago/Turabian Style

Calestani, Cristina, Meena S. Moses, Elena Maestri, Nelson Marmiroli, and Elizabeth A. Bray. 2015. "Constitutive Expression of the Barley Dehydrin Gene aba2 Enhances Arabidopsis Germination in Response to Salt Stress" International Journal of Plant Biology 6, no. 1: 5826. https://doi.org/10.4081/pb.2015.5826

APA Style

Calestani, C., Moses, M. S., Maestri, E., Marmiroli, N., & Bray, E. A. (2015). Constitutive Expression of the Barley Dehydrin Gene aba2 Enhances Arabidopsis Germination in Response to Salt Stress. International Journal of Plant Biology, 6(1), 5826. https://doi.org/10.4081/pb.2015.5826

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Constitutive Expression of the Barley Dehydrin Gene aba2 Enhances Arabidopsis Germination in Response to Salt Stress

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