Abstract
Halophytes are rich sources of salt stress tolerance genes which have often been utilized for introduction of salt-tolerance character in salt-sensitive plants. In the present study, we overexpressed PcINO1 and PcIMT1 gene(s), earlier characterized in this laboratory from wild halophytic rice Porteresia coarctata, into IR64 indica rice either singly or in combination and assessed their role in conferring salt-tolerance. Homozygous T3/T4 transgenic plants revealed that PcINO1 transformed transgenic rice lines exhibit significantly higher tolerance upto 200 mM or higher salt concentration with negligible compromise in their growth or other physiological parameters compared to the untransformed system grown without stress. The PcIMT1-lines or the double transgenic lines (DC1) having PcINO1 and PcIMT1 introgressed together, were less efficient in such respect. Comparison of inositol and/or pinitol pool in three types of transgenic plants suggests that plants whose inositol production remains uninterrupted under stress by the functional PcINO1 protein, showed normal growth as in the wild-type plants without stress. It is conceivable that inositol itself acts as a stress-ameliorator and/or as a switch for a number of other pathways important for imparting salt-tolerance. Such selective manipulation of the inositol metabolic pathway may be one of the ways to combat salt stress in plants.
Highlights
Abiotic stress inflicted on the sessile plants implies ~65% loss of yield for crop plants each year[1,2,3] where salinity stress itself is a major contributor[4,5]
Inositol and its metabolic intermediates like inositol polyphosphates (InsPs), galactinol, raffinose-family oligosaccharides (RFOs), methylated derivatives like pinitol, cell wall polysaccharides and phosphoinositides participate in the crucial biological processes such as signal transduction[13,14], membrane trafficking[13], mRNA export[15], stress tolerance[16,17] and phosphorus storage[18,19]
Protein sequences of PcIMT1 and PcINO1 were analyzed through AllergenOnline Database v15 (January 12, 2015)
Summary
Abiotic stress inflicted on the sessile plants implies ~65% loss of yield for crop plants each year[1,2,3] where salinity stress itself is a major contributor[4,5]. Inositol and its metabolic intermediates like inositol polyphosphates (InsPs), galactinol, raffinose-family oligosaccharides (RFOs), methylated derivatives like pinitol, cell wall polysaccharides and phosphoinositides participate in the crucial biological processes such as signal transduction[13,14], membrane trafficking[13], mRNA export[15], stress tolerance[16,17] and phosphorus storage[18,19]. The primary breakdown product of inositol, d-glucuronic acid, is utilized in the www.nature.com/scientificreports/. A number of metabolic pathways have earlier been manipulated for production of essential metabolites along with overexpression of regulatory genes to confer salt-tolerance to different plants[23]. We attempted manipulation of the inositol metabolism which involves a major biochemical network in transgenic rice lines by overexpressing two genes from Porteresia coarctata viz. All the transgenics were studied in terms of their growth, development and other characteristics under salinity stress
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