Overexpression tochopherol cyclase (At.TC) in tabacco (Nicotiana tabacum) plants

Raanaian, Nahid; Abbasi, Ali Reza; Zeynali-Khanghah, Hassan

Overexpression tochopherol cyclase (At.TC) in tabacco (Nicotiana tabacum) plants

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

¹ M.Sc. student of Agricultural Biotechnology, Department of Agronomy and Plant Breeding, University of Tehran, Karaj, Iran

² Assistant Professor , Department of Agronomy and Plant Breeding, University of Tehran, Karaj, Iran.

³ Associated Professor, Department of Agronomy and Plant Breeding, University of Tehran, Karaj, Iran.

Abstract

Exposing plants to both biotic and abiotic stresses could lead to increased reactive oxygen species and in turn could induce oxidative stress. In order to increase scavenging capacity of oxidative agents, the different plant antioxidant activities also are arising. Among those, vitamin E includes a group of Fat-soluble antioxidants, which their synthesis is limited to photosynthetic organisms including plants, alga and cyanobacteria. In this study, the coding region of Arabidopsis Tocopherol cyclase gene; which catalyzes 2,3-dimethyl-5-phytyl-1,4-benzoquinone (DMPBQ) into γ –tocopherol; was introduced into pBin vector containing the coding region of GFP protein. Then, the obtained construct was transformed into tobacco plant through agrobacterium-mediated method. Leaves of 2-3 weak old seedlings were selected as explant and direct regeneration was performed. In order to confirmation of transgenic plants, PCR by using specific primers was carried out. Due to the fact that the pBin vector contains the kanamycin resistant gene, seeds belonging to the T0 transgenic plants were planted on medium containing kanamycin and green seedling were selected as transgenic T1 plant. In order to evaluate the effects of transferred gens on physiological parameters, mature T1 transgenic plant as well as the wild type plants were subjected to drought stress and relative water content was measured.

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