Isolation of a novel barley cDNA encoding a nuclear protein involved in stress response and leaf senescence

Abstract

In order to isolate genes involved in the early acclimation of winter barley (Hordeum vulgare L. cv. Trixi) to a combined cold and light stress of 2 degrees C and 600 micromol m(-2) s(-1) restriction fragment differential display-polymerase chain reaction was performed. Impact of the cold-treatment on the leaves was characterized by measuring chlorophyll content and photosystem II efficiency. By this approach several cDNAs of genes that quickly and transiently up-regulated during early stages of the stress were identified. One of these genes (HvFP1) includes sequence motifs representing a heavy metal associated domain (HMA), nuclear localization signals (NLS) and a farnesylation motif. This gene is also induced at drought stress, during leaf senescence and after exposure to abscisic acid. Analysis of its spatial expression patterns in barley plants either grown at 21 or 2 degrees C showed that in contrast to the situation in leaves transcript level of this gene is high not only in cold-treated plants but also in controls kept at 21 degrees C in plant compartments enriched in meristematic tissues. The nuclear localization of the protein was confirmed by confocal laser scanning microscopy of epidermal onion cells after particle bombardment with chimeric HVFP1-GFP constructs. Using a construct with a modified farnesylation motif yielded a different pattern of nuclear distribution of the chimeric protein.

Characterization of transcription factor gene SNAC2 conferring cold and salt tolerance in rice

“…Actually, homologous genes of many up-regulated genes have been documented with functions in the responses or adaptations to abiotic stresses in plants. The products of these genes include peroxidase (Murgia et al 2004), ornithine aminotransferase (Roosens et al 1998), lysine ketoglutarate reductase (Galili et al 2001), heavy metal-associated protein (Barth et al 2004), sodium/hydrogen exchanger (Shi et al 2003), heat shock protein (Sun et al 2001), GDSLlike lipase (Naranjo et al 2006), BURP domain (RD22) containing protein (Goh et al 2003), and phenylalanine ammonia lyase (Vincent et al 2005), ATP-dependent helicase (Vashisht et al 2005), Tat pathway signal sequence family protein (Ochsner et al 2002). Plant growth is often suppressed under stress conditions.…”

Stress induced and nuclear localized HIPP26 from Arabidopsis thaliana interacts via its heavy metal associated domain with the drought stress related zinc finger transcription factor ATHB29

“…The abiotic stress treatments started 8 weeks after sowing at the beginning of the day phase. Cold treatment was as described in Barth et al (2004). Unstressed control plants were always harvested at the same time points.…”

“…The PCR products were cloned by using the 'pGEM-T Vector System I', sequenced, digested with BglII and BamHI and cloned into BglII site of pKEx4tr-GFP02. The vector and the transformation procedure of onion epidermal cells were performed as described by Barth et al (2004). GFP fluorescence was determined by FITC-filtered visual inspection under a confocal laser scanning microscope (Carl Zeiss, Oberkochen, Germany).…”

“…Recently we identified in barley the novel stress and senescence regulated protein HvFP1 with a heavy metal associated domain and a C-terminal isoprenylation site (Barth et al 2004). In the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana sequence analyses revealed that there are a total of at least 44 genes encoding proteins which also represent these two characteristic domains.…”

Monitoring of gene expression profiles and identification of candidate genes involved in drought responses in Festuca mairei

“…The SSBI-D11 encoding of an enzyme for C-compound and carbohydrate utilization has been identiWed as a transcript diVerentially expressed in response to high salinity in the mangrove, Bruguiera gymnorrhiza (Banzai et al 2002). The farnesylated protein encoded by SSBI-B9 has been found in Hordeum vulgare to be a nuclear protein involved in stress response and leaf senescence (Barth et al 2004). SSBI-D4, SSBI-D9, SSBII-A3, and SSBI-A4 encoded a Wber protein Fb19 (Chow et al, unpublished), a dehydration-responsive family protein (Albertini et al 2004), a type-1 pathogenesis-related protein (Stevens et al 1996), and a DNAJ heat shock N-terminal domain-containing protein (Chow et al, unpublished), respectively, which have been widely studied in association with stress response.…”