Abstract
Cold stress is considered as one of the major environmental factors that adversely affects the plant growth and distribution. Therefore, there arises an immediate need to cultivate effective strategies aimed at developing stress-tolerant crops that would boost the production and minimise the risks associated with cold stress. In this study, a novel cold-responsive protein1 (BoCRP1) isolated from Brassica oleracea was ectopically expressed in a cold susceptible tomato genotype Shalimar 1 and its function was investigated in response to chilling stress. BoCRP1 was constitutively expressed in all the tissues of B. oleracea including leaf, root and stem. However, its expression was found to be significantly increased in response to cold stress. Moreover, transgenic tomato plants expressing BoCRP1 exhibited increased tolerance to chilling stress (4 °C) with an overall improved rate of seed germination, increased root length, reduced membrane damage and increased accumulation of osmoprotectants. Furthermore, we observed increased transcript levels of stress responsive genes and enhanced accumulation of reactive oxygen species scavenging enzymes in transgenic plants on exposure to chilling stress. Taken together, these results strongly suggest that BoCRP1 is a promising candidate gene to improve the cold stress tolerance in tomato.
Highlights
That C-repeat/dehydration response elements (CRT/DRE) binding factors (CBFs) genes regulates the expression of 414 downstream cold regulated (COR) genes, besides the rate of seed germination was significantly lower in case of CBF mutants compared to WT15
Various sequence alignment tools revealed a strong homology between BoCRP1 protein and Kin proteins of B. napus, B. rapa and A. thaliana annotated cold-resistant proteins (Fig. 1a)
On performing the phylogenetic analysis, it was clear that BoCRP1 has a close semblance to homologue from A. thaliana, B. rapa and B. napus, (Fig. 1b)
Summary
That CBF genes regulates the expression of 414 downstream COR genes, besides the rate of seed germination was significantly lower in case of CBF mutants compared to WT15. Researchers have identified vast number of cold-responsive genes in Arabidopsis and other plant which include KIN1, KIN2, RD29A, RD29B, DREBs and DELLA17–22. In the last few decades, a lot of strategies involving genetics, functional genomics, physiology and biochemistry have been employed to understand the response of plants to different environmental stresses such drought, cold and salinity. We focus on the functional aspect of BoCRP1 whose expression analysis indicates that BoCRP1 is constitutively expressed in different tissue samples of B. oleracea variety capitata and rapidly induced under cold stress conditions. This BoCRP1 protein is a member of Kin family and shows about 90% homology with other members of KIN gene family (KIN1 and Kin[2]). Our findings suggest that overexpressing BoCRP1 in cold susceptible tomato renders it tolerant to cold stress
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