Abstract
Reactive oxygen species (ROS) are produced in both stressed and unstressed cells. Superoxide dismutase (SOD) and phenylalanine ammonia lyase (PAL) play an important role in the defense against ROS. Eight different turf grass species were used in order to detect their ability to withstand environmental stress through investigating SOD and PAL gene expression and also the genetic relationship among them using random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) molecular markers. The levels of expression of PAL , SOD genes and mRNA varied with the type of turf; both PAL and SOD gene expressions were low in cold season turf grasses (kentucky blue grass and fine fescue), moderate for bermuda hybrids (tifgreen and tifway) and high in Paspalum vaginatum . Primer 3 (UBC-245) can be used to distinguish between Paspalum species, also between common burmuda ( Cynodon dactylon ) and burmuda hybrids. It was concluded that hot season genera can withstand environmental stress more than cold season ones since they have more SOD and PAL gene expressions. Also, DNA markers can be used to differentiate between different turf genera which are hard to be differentiated morphologically. Keywords: Turf, superoxide dismutase, phenylalanine ammonia lyase, RAPD markers, oligonucleotide primers, burmuda hybrids. African Journal of Biotechnology , Vol 13(24) 2394-2399
Highlights
Reactive oxygen species (ROS) are produced in both stressed and unstressed cells
The results show bands between 300 and 400 bp which is consistent with the 341 bp of the Phenylalanine ammonia lyase (PAL) gene primers (Figure 2a)
The PAL gene expression was low for Kentucky bluegrass, fine fescue and P. dilatatum, moderate for St
Summary
Reactive oxygen species (ROS) are produced in both stressed and unstressed cells. Plants have developed a defense system against ROS for limiting the formation of ROS as well as organizing its removal. The superoxide dismutase (SOD) constitute the first line of defense against ROS. SOD is found in plant cell wall, mitochondria, chloroplast, microsomes, gloxysomes, apoplast and cytosol (Ruth et al, 2002). Phenylalanine ammonia lyase (PAL) is the enzyme at the entry-point of the phenylpropanoid pathway, which yields a variety of phenolic compounds, salsilic acid and lignin with structural and defense-related functions. PAL activity has been considered to be part of a defense mechanism operating in stress-afflicted cells (Dixon and Pavia, 1995; Yang and Shetty, 1998). Identifying turf grass phenotypes based on morphological traits involves a lengthy survey of plant growth that is labor intensive and vulnerable to environmental conditions (Lin and Hong, 1994),
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