Identification and Functional Characterization of the GALACTINOL SYNTHASE (MoGolS1) Gene in Melissa officinalis Plants

Abstract

Galactinol and rafinose accumulation in plants is associated with stressful environmental conditions such as cold, heat, or dehydration by the action of galactinols synthase (GolS) in the raffinose family of oligosaccharides biosynthetic pathway from UDP-galactose. Moreover, several reports mentioned that GolS transcription is up regulated by various environmental stresses like cold, heat, dehydration. Therefore, to determine whether MoGolS1 was induced with the abiotic stress we analyzed the expression pattern of the gene under various abiotic stresses like heat, cold, abscisic acid, sucrose and salt concentration in the lemon balm plants grown in standard MS medium. The MoGolS1 gene was 981-bp in length encoding 326 amino acids in its sequence and shared 77 and 76% sequence similarity with Arabidopsis thaliana galactinol synthase4 (AtGolS4) and AtGolS1 genes respectively. The MoGolS1 gene was strongly expressed by the abiotic stress induced by sucrose, ABA or heat shock. It was also expressed in responses to cold, manitol and NaCl. MoGolS1 gene induction with various stresses may be possible for itscrucial function in abiotic stress tolerance in plants, providing a good engineering target for genetic engineering.

Osmotic stress induces genes, enzymes and accumulation of galactinol, raffinose and stachyose in seedlings of pea (Pisum sativum L.)

“…The presence of cis-regulatory elements recognized by the transcription factor mediating the ABA response were shown in some GolS genes in Arabidopsis (Taji et al 2002) and Populus trichocarpa (Zhou et al 2014). Additionally, ABA enhances the MoGolS1 mRNA transcription in Melissa officinalis plants (Kim et al 2011) and PtrGolS genes that contain ABRE elements in the promoter region (Zhou et al 2014). The transcription of PtrGolS4 mRNA that lacks ABRE elements in the 5 0 flanking region was decreased by 24-h salt, osmotic, cold or ABA treatments in Populus trichocarpa (Zhou et al 2014).…”

Characterization and Expression Profiles of Galaetinol Synthase and Raffinose Synthase in Rubber Tree

“…It is involved in plant defense and response to abiotic stress such as low temperature, drought, non-selective contact herbicide (methylviologen, MV), mechanical injury and reactive oxygen species (Maruyama et al, 2009;Zuther et al, 2004). Existing studies have mostly reported the relationship between RFOs accumulation and resistance in seeds or leaves, for example, At5g40390 is the only functional gene of raffinose accumulation induced by abiotic stress in Arabidopsis leaves (Kim et al, 2011;Egert et al, 2013). By analyzing the structure and physicochemical properties of GolS and RS family members in laticifer of rubber tree, we found that they have typical characteristics of conserved plant GolS and RS and are soluble proteins expressed in cytoplasm.…”

Modified CTAB protocol for RNA extraction from Lemon balm (Melissa officinalis L.)

“…The currently commercial kits such as RNeasy, BioZOL and BIOLINE are simple, rapid, non-toxic with good yields of high-quality RNA from plant tissues, but too expensive. Moreover, successful RNA extraction by RNX-Plus and TRIzol from lemon balm plant has only been reported in seedling stage and explants grown in solid MS medium, respectively (Kim et al, 2011;Nasiri-Bezenjani et al, 2014). Upon this status, we tested three different methods (modified CTAB, TRIzol and RNX-Plus) to evaluate the best and effective RNA extraction method from 3 months old lemon balm plant.…”