Proceedings of the XLV Italian Society of Agricultural Genetics - SIGA Annual Congress

Salsomaggiore Terme, Italy - 26/29 September, 2001

ISBN 88-900622-1-5

Poster Abstract

EXPRESSION OF PHYTOCHELATIN SYNTHASE GENE IN NICOTIANA TABACUM PLANTS

CARDARELLI M.*, POMPONI M.**, DE PAOLIS A.***, CENSI V*

* Centro Acidi Nucleici c/o Dip. Genetica e Biologia molecolare, UNI 'La Sapienza' Roma, Italy

** Dip. Genetica e Biologia molecolare, UNI 'La Sapienza' Roma, Italy

mirella.pomponi@uniroma1.it

*** Ist. Orticoltura e Coltura Industriale, CNR Via S. Loja 85050Tito Scalo, Potenza, Italy

phytochelatins, metal tolerance, rolB, PC synthase

It has been demonstrated that phytochelatins (PCs) play a key role in metal tolerance since many plants overproduce phytochelatins when exposed to excess heavy metals and phytochelatin synthase gene increases metal tolerance in yeast. Our approach is to overexpress the PC synthase gene in the model species Nicotiana tabacum transformed with the rolB gene of Agrobacterium rhizogenes and evaluate transgenic plants for cadmium tolerance. Plants expressing rolB are a convenient experimental system, as rolB causes expansion of the root system but rolB and normal tobacco plants show no differences in their resistance to different Cd concentrations.We isolated the c-DNA encoding PC synthase from Arabidopsis and cloned the coding region into a binary vector containing the CaMV35S promoter. Normal and rolB tobacco plants have been transformed with this construct and are currently being analysed. The expression of endogenous PC synthase in tobacco plants grown in the presence or absence of Cd will be analysed.