Abstract
Arabidopsis thaliana was transformed previously with thecodA gene from the soil bacteriumArthrobacter globiformis. This gene encodes choline oxidase, the enzyme that converts choline to glycinebetaine. Transformation with thecodA gene significantly enhanced the tolerance of transgenic plants to low temperature and high-salt stress. We report here that seeds of transgenic plants that expressed thecodA gene were also more tolerant to salt stress during germination than seeds of non-transformed wild-type plants. Seedlings of transgenic plants grew more rapidly than those of wild-type plants under salt-stress conditions. Furthermore, exogenously applied glycinebetaine was effective in alleviating the harmful effects of salt stress during germination of seeds and growth of young seedlings, a result that suggests that it was glycinebetaine that had enhanced the tolerance of the transgenic plants. These observations indicate that synthesis of glycinebetaine in transgenic plantsin vivo, as a result of the expression of thecodA gene, might be veryuseful in improving the ability of crop plants to tolerate salt stress.
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Hayashi, H., Alia, Sakamoto, A. et al. Enhanced germination under high-salt conditions of seeds of transgenicArabidopsis with a bacterial gene (codA) for choline oxidase. J. Plant Res. 111, 357–362 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02512197
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02512197