Degree
Master of Science
Program
Biology
Supervisor
Dr. Priti Krishna
Abstract
Brassinosteroids (BRs) have remarkable ability to increase stress tolerance in plants. Investigations to understand the molecular mechanisms underlying BR-mediated stress tolerance resulted in identification of genes belonging to the family calmodulin binding protein X (CBPX). The present study was focused on studying the role of CBPX1 and CBPX2 in BR mediated stress tolerance and functional characterization using a reverse genetic approach. The upregulation of CBPX1 and CBPX2 by BR and stress noted in publicly available AtGenexpress datasets and by qRT-PCR analysis strongly suggests that these are BR responsive genes and functional analysis of T-DNA insertion mutants showed salt stress related functions in A. thaliana. The T-DNA insertion mutants cbpx1 and cbpx2 were sensitive to salt stress compared to WT, while CBPX1 OE lines showed increased salt tolerance. The results of the present study have revealed two new stress related genes, CBPX1 and CBPX2 that displayed increased expression in response to BR and salt stress, and also play an important role in conferring salt stress tolerance to plants. CBPX1 also plays an important role in determining the root length in A. thaliana.
Recommended Citation
Pallegar, Purvikalyan, "Functional Analysis of Two Brassinosteroid Responsive, Putative Calmodulin-Binding Proteins 60 (CBP60S) in Arabidopsis Thaliana" (2014). Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. 2041.
https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/2041