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Enhanced tolerance to drought stress in transgenic tobacco plants overexpressing VTE1 for increased tocopherol production from Arabidopsis thaliana

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Abstract

Tocopherol cyclase (VTE1, encoded by VTE1 gene) catalyzes the penultimate step of tocopherol synthesis. Transgenic tobacco plants overexpressing VTE1 from Arabidopsis were exposed to drought conditions during which transgenic lines had decreased lipid peroxidation, electrolyte leakage and H2O2 content, but had increased chlorophyll compared with the wild type. Thus VTE1 can be used to increase vitamin E content of plants and also to enhance tolerance to environmental stresses.

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Acknowledgements

This work was funded by the Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC: 30600370), by the Foundation of the National Basic Research Program (Grant No. 2007CB108905), and by the key project of Chinese Academy of Sciences (KSCX2-YW-N-50).

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Correspondence to Shuangyan Chen or Gongshe Liu.

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Liu, X., Hua, X., Guo, J. et al. Enhanced tolerance to drought stress in transgenic tobacco plants overexpressing VTE1 for increased tocopherol production from Arabidopsis thaliana . Biotechnol Lett 30, 1275–1280 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10529-008-9672-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10529-008-9672-y

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