Abstract
The intracellular accumulation of osmoprotectants, such as glycine betaine and other low molecular weight compounds, is a well investigated response of environmental stress occurring in a wide range of organisms. By introducing the bacterial bet A gene, encoding choline dehydrogenase (CDH), into tobacco both a salt and choline resistant phenotype was achieved. As measured by dried weights, there was an 80% increase in salt tolerance between the transgenic and wild-type plants at 300 mM NaCl.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Access options
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 12 print issues and online access
$209.00 per year
only $17.42 per issue
Buy this article
- Purchase on Springer Link
- Instant access to full article PDF
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Boyer, J.S. 1982. Plant productivity and environment. Science 218: 443–448.
Yancey, P.H., Clark, M.E., Hand, S.C., Bowlus, R.D. and Somero, G.N. 1982. Living with water stress: Evolution of osmolyte systems. Science 217: 1214–1222.
McCue, K.F. and Hanson, A.D. 1990. Drought and salt tolerance: towards understanding and application. Tibtech 8: 358–362.
Incharoensakdi, A., Takabe, T. and Akazawa, T. 1986. Effect of betaine on enzyme activity and subunit interaction of ribulose-l,5-bisphosphate carboxy-lase/oxygenase fromAphanothece halophytica . Plant Physiol. 81: 1044–1049.
Wyn Jones, R.G. and Storey, R. 1981. Physiology and biochemistry of drought resistance in plants, Betaines, p. 172–204. Academica Press Australia.
Kishitani, S., Watanabe, K., Yasuda, S., Arakawa, K. and Takabe, T. 1994. Accumulation of glycinebetaine during cold acclimation and freezing in leaves of winter and spring barley plants. Plant, Cell and Environment. 17: 89–95.
McCue, K.F. and Hanson, A.D. 1992. Salt-inducible betaine aldehyde dehydrogenase from sugar beet: cDNA cloning and expression. Plant Mol. Biol. 18: 1–11.
Weretilnyk, E.A., Bednarek, S., McCue, K.F., Rhodes, D. and Hanson, A.D. 1989. Comparative biochemical and immunological studies of the glycine betaine synthesis pathway in diverse families of dicotyledons. Planta 178: 342–352.
Hanson, A.D. and Rhodes, D. 1983. 14C Tracer evidence for synthesis of choline and betaine via phosphoryl base intermediates in salinized sugarbeet leaves. Plant Physiol. 71: 692–700.
Brouquisse, R., Weigel, P., Rhodes, D., Yocum, C.F. and Hason, A.D. 1988. Evidence for a ferredoxin-dependent choline monooxygenase from spinach chloroplast stroma. Plant Physiol. 90: 322–329.
Landfald, B. and Ström, A.R. 1986. Choline-glycine betaine pathway confers a high level of osmotic tolerance in Escherichia coli J . Bacteriol. 165: 849–855.
Lamark, T. et al. 1991. DNA sequence and analysis of the bet genes encoding the osmoregulatory choline-glycine betaine pathway of Escherichia coli . Mol. Microbiol. 5: 1049–1064.
Boyd, L.A. et al. 1991. Characterization of an Escherichia coli gene encoding betaine aldehyde dehydrogenase (BADH): structural similarity to mammalian ALDHs and a plant BADH. Gene 103: 45–52.
Rathinasabapathi, B., McCue, K.F., Gage, D.A. and Hanson, A.D. 1994. Metabolic engineering of glycine betaine synthesis: plant betaine aldehyde dehydrogenase lacking typical transit peptide are targeted to tobacco chloro-plasts where they confer betaine aldehyde resistance. Planta 193: 155–162.
Holmström, K. et al.1994. Production of Escherichia coli betaine-aldehyde dehydrogenase, an enzyme required for the synthesis of the osmoprotectant glycine betaine, in transgenic plants. Plant J. 6: 749–758.
Giannoni, F., Field, J.F. and Davidson, N.O. 1994. An improved reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction method to study a lipoprotein gene expression in Caco-2 cells. J. Lip. Res. 35: 340–350.
Jefferson, R.A., Kavanagh, T.A. and Bevan, M.W. 1987. GUS fusions: β-glu-curonidase as a sensitive and versatile gene fusion marker in higher plants.EMBO J. 6: 3901–3907.
Bartels, D. and Nelson, D. 1994. Approaches to improve stress tolerance using molecular genetics. Plant, Cell and Environment 17: 659–667.
Tarszynski, M.C., Jensen, R.G. and Bohnert, H.J. 1993. Stress protection of tobacco by production of the osmolyte mannitol. Science 259: 508–510.
Le Rudlier, D., Ström, A.R., Dandekar, A.M., Smith, L.T. and Valentine, R.C. 1984. Molecular biology of osmoregulation. Science 224: 1064–1068.
Ishitani, M., Arakawa, K., Mizuno, K., Kishitani, S. and Takabe, T. 1993. Betaine aldehyde dehydrogenase in Gramineae: levels in leaves of both betaine accumulating and nonaccumulating cereal plants. Plant Cell Physiol. 34: 493–495.
Saki, R.K. et al. 1988. Primer-directed enzymatic amplification of DNA with a thermostable DNA polymerase. Science 239: 487–91.
Walden, R., Koncz, C. and Schell, J. 1990. The use of gene vectors in plant molecular biology. MMCB 1: 175–194.
Maniatis, T., Fritsch, E.F. and Sambrook, J. 1982. Molecular cloning: A Laboratory Manual. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor, NY
Figurski, D.H. and Helinski, D.R. 1979. Replication of an origin-containing derivate of plasmid RK2 dependent on a plasmid function provided in trans . Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 76: 1648–1652.
Edwards, K., Johnstone, C. and Thomson, C. 1991. A simple and rapid method for the preparation of plant genomic DNA for PCR analysis.Nucl. Acids Res. 19: 1349.
Murashige, T. and Skoog, F. 1962. A revised medium for rapid growth and bioassay with tobacco tissue cultures.Physiol. Plant 15: 473–497.
Rogers, S.G. and Fraley, R.T. 1986. Gene transfer to plants: production of transformed plants using Ti plasmid vectors. Methods in Enzymology 118: 627–684.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Lilius, G., Holmberg, N. & Bülow, L. Enhanced NaCl Stress Tolerance in Transgenic Tobacco Expressing Bacterial Choline Dehydrogenase. Nat Biotechnol 14, 177–180 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt0296-177
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt0296-177
This article is cited by
-
Morphological and physio-biochemical responses of cactus pear (Opuntia ficus indica (L.) Mill.) organogenic cultures to salt and drought stresses induced in vitro
Plant Cell, Tissue and Organ Culture (PCTOC) (2023)
-
Metabolic engineering of osmoprotectants to elucidate the mechanism(s) of salt stress tolerance in crop plants
Planta (2021)
-
Comparative transcriptomic profiling of larvae and post-larvae of Macrobrachium rosenbergii in response to metamorphosis and salinity exposure
Genes & Genomics (2016)