Abstract
It is well established that small heat shock proteins (sHSPs) play an important role in thermotolerance in various organisms due to their abundance and diversity. In the present study, a chloroplast small heat shock protein gene (LeHSP21) from tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum cv PKM-1) was constitutively expressed in tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum L. cv Wisconsin 38) plants via Agrobacterium-mediated transformation. When compared to wild-type control plants, transgenic tobacco plants constitutively expressing LeHSP21, driven by the cauliflower mosaic virus 35S promoter, exhibited improved tolerance to both high temperature and oxidative stress. Furthermore, when the seedlings were subjected to high temperature treatment, the activities of anti-oxidative enzymes and the content of proline were significantly higher in transgenic plants than those in the wild-type plants. Our results presented here demonstrate the feasibility of improving high temperature and oxidative stress tolerance in plants through the expression of LeHSP21 gene.
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This work has been jointly supported by the following grants: the National Natural Science Foundation of China 31171169, 31100212, 31270314, 31371228, 31370670; the National Mega Project of GMO Crops 2013ZX08001003-007, 2013ZX08004002-006, 2014ZX0800942B; and the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences XDA08030108; The comprehensive Survey of Lithium, Boron and Biological Resources in Salt Lake on the Tibetan Plateau [2015] 02-04-04-001; and Shanghai Key Laboratory of Bio-Energy Crops.
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Jiang Zhang and Haiyan Chen contributed equally to this work.
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Zhang, J., Chen, H., Wang, H. et al. Constitutive Expression of a Tomato Small Heat Shock Protein Gene LeHSP21 Improves Tolerance to High-Temperature Stress by Enhancing Antioxidation Capacity in Tobacco. Plant Mol Biol Rep 34, 399–409 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11105-015-0925-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11105-015-0925-3