Abstract
High-affinity K+ transporters play an important role in K+ absorption of plants. We isolated a HAK gene from Aeluropus littoralis, a graminaceous halophyte. The amino acid sequence of AlHAK showed high homology with HAK transporters obtained from Oryza sativa (82%) and Hordeum vulgare (82%). When expressed in Saccharomyces cereviae WΔ3, AlHAK performed high-affinity K+ uptake with a Km value of 8 μM, and the growth of transformants was dramatically inhibited by 150 mM Rb+ and 150 mM Cs+ but less affected by 300 mM Na+. AlHAK may thus improve the capacity of plants to maintain a high cytosolic K+/Na+ ratio at high salinity.
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Acknowledgments
We thank Professor Francisco Rubio from the Centro de Edafologíay Biología Aplicada del Segura-CSIC for providing the yeast strain, and we thank Dr. Jane Setlow and Dr. Xiao-Hong Yu from Brookhaven National Laboratory for proofreading of the manuscript.
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Su, Q., Feng, S., An, L. et al. Cloning and functional expression in Saccharomyces cereviae of a K+ transporter, AlHAK, from the graminaceous halophyte, Aeluropus littoralis . Biotechnol Lett 29, 1959–1963 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10529-007-9484-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10529-007-9484-5