Abstract: Salinity negatively affects plant growth and causes significant crop yield losses world-wide. Susceptibility or tolerance of plants to high salinity is a coordinated action of multiple stress responsive genes, which also interacts with other components of stress signal transduction pathways. In plants, Cu/Zn superoxide dismutase (Cu/Zn-SOD), ascorbate peroxidase (APX), and catalase (CAT) are important scavengers of reactive oxygen species (ROS) to protect the cell from damage. In the present study, we isolated Cu/Zn-SOD from high altitude plant of western Himalaya namely, Potentilla atrosanguinea and overexpressed it under CaMV 35S promoter. The aim of the present study was to unravel whether the overexpression of antioxidant gene has any effect on the germination and tolerance levels in transgenic under salinity stress. Transgenic Arabidopsis overexpressing Cu/Zn-SOD showed tolerance to salt stress and improved germination rates that could have been due to the higher expression levels of the genes encoding enzymes of the antioxidant pathways. We propose that Cu/Zn-SOD overexpression elevates transcript levels of antioxidant related genes, leading to enhanced antioxidant activity. The resultant increase of antioxidant activity improves abiotic stress tolerance.
Keywords: Arabidopsis thaliana, Salinity stress, Cu/Zn-SOD, Antioxidant, Germination.
Title: Effect of Salinity Stress on Germination, Tolerance and Antioxidant Response in Arabidopsis Thaliana Overexpressing Cu/Zn-SOD
Author: Amrina Shafi, Mudasir A Mir, Insha Zahoor
International Journal of Life Sciences Research
ISSN 2348-313X (Print), ISSN 2348-3148 (online)
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