Abstract
Dehydrins (DHNs) as a member of late-embryogenesis-abundant (LEA) proteins are involved in plant abiotic stress tolerance. Two dehydrins PpDHNA and PpDHNC were previously characterized from the moss Physcomitrella patens, which has been suggested to be an ideal model plant to study stress tolerance due to its adaptability to extreme environment. In this study, functions of these two genes were analyzed by heterologous expressions in Arabidopsis. Phenotype analysis revealed that overexpressing PpDHN dehydrin lines had stronger stress resistance than wild type and empty-vector control lines. These stress tolerance mainly due to the up-regulation of stress-related genes expression and mitigation to oxidative damage. The transgenic plants showed strong scavenging ability of reactive oxygen species(ROS), which was attributed to the enhancing of the content of antioxidant enzymes like superoxide dismutase (SOD) and catalase (CAT). Further analysis showed that the contents of chlorophyll and proline tended to be the appropriate level (close to non-stress environment) and the malondialdehyde (MDA) were repressed in these transgenic plants after exposure to stress. All these results suggest the PpDHNA and PpDHNC played a crucial role in response to drought and salt stress.
Highlights
Abiotic stressors, such as drought and salinity, can affect the normal growth of plants by affecting their physiological and metabolic processes, inhibiting the production of crops
We compared PpDHN with 10 different DHN proteins from Arabidopsis (Hundertmark and Hincha, 2008) and divided them into different groups according to their sequence (Figure 1C)
The results indicated that the PpDHN proteins are closely related to the DHNs of Arabidopsis (Figure S2 and Table S1)
Summary
Abiotic stressors, such as drought and salinity, can affect the normal growth of plants by affecting their physiological and metabolic processes, inhibiting the production of crops. Stress damage is frequently reflected in the generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS), which can cause damage to cellular components if accumulation reaches a certain threshold (Miller et al, 2010; Krasensky and Jonak, 2012).ROS, such as 1O2, H2O2, O·2−, and OH, can cause oxidative damage to proteins, DNA, and lipids (Apel and Hirt, 2004). These superoxides can affect the stability of the structure of the latter and cause it to lose its function. Plant biologists have long been interested in the mechanisms underlying the responses of plants to environmental changes, and a number of regulatory and/or protective proteins have been identified in plants exposed to different stressors (Choi et al, 1999; Skinner et al, 2005; Svensson et al, 2006; Yamaguchi-Shinozaki and Shinozaki, 2006).
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
