Over-expression of OSRIP18 increases drought and salt tolerance in transgenic rice plants

• DOI: 10.1007/s11248-011-9568-9
• Publication Date: 2011-10-25T18:40:21Z
• Authors: Shu-Ye Jiang; Ritu Bhalla; Rengasamy Ramamoo...; Hong-Fen Luan; Prasanna Nori Ven...; Minne Cai; Srinivasan Ramach...
• Keywords: 0301 basic medicine; 2. Zero hunger; Drought stress; Ectopic over-expression; Ribosome-inactivating protein; Ribosome Inactivating Proteins; Oryza; Salt Tolerance; 15. Life on land; Plants, Genetically Modified; 630; 6. Clean water; Droughts; 03 medical and health sciences; Gene Expression Regulation, Plant; Stress, Physiological; High salinity stress; Rice

Both drought and high salinity stresses are major abiotic factors that limit the yield of agricultural crops. Transgenic techniques have been regarded as effective ways to improve crops in their tolerance to these abiotic stresses. Functional characterization of genes is the prerequisite to identify candidates for such improvement. Here, we have investigated the biological functions of an Oryza sativa Ribosome-inactivating protein gene 18 (OSRIP18) by ectopically expressing this gene under the control of CaMV 35S promoter in the rice genome. We have generated 11 independent transgenic rice plants and all of them showed significantly increased tolerance to drought and high salinity stresses. Global gene expression changes by Microarray analysis showed that more than 100 probe sets were detected with up-regulated expression abundance while signals from only three probe sets were down-regulated after over-expression of OSRIP18. Most of them were not regulated by drought or high salinity stresses. Our data suggested that the increased tolerance to these abiotic stresses in transgenic plants might be due to up-regulation of some stress-dependent/independent genes and OSRIP18 may be potentially useful in further improving plant tolerance to various abiotic stresses by over-expression.