dc.description.abstract | Drought is one of the very important growth-limiting factors for sugarcane
production. Δ¹-pyrroline-5-carboxylate synthase (P5CS) is the rate-limiting
enzyme in proline synthesis, and it plays an important role in plant response to
drought stress. In this study, P5CS gene segment was inserted into pGEM-T Easy
vector and transformed into competent cell E. coli DH5α. The result of PCR
detection of segment of P5CS gene was 252 bp in length, the accession number
on GenBank was EF620362.1. The RT-qPCR analysis showed that the expression
of P5CS of test samples under drought stress was higher when compared with the
internal control. The experiment was a factorial based on completely randomized
design with three replicates. In sampling time points, the maximum level of mRNA
was observed at 2 weeks after stress was applied. For treatment C1 (water
withdrawal and then 3-day watering recovery) at 2 weeks after stress induction,
the expression of P5CS was almost 1.13-fold higher when compared to the internal
control samples with p value < 0.01. In both cultivars, gene expression decreased
from 2 weeks to 6 weeks. The results suggested that the P5CS was a stress
inducible gene. This gene has the potential to be used for improvement of drought
stress tolerance in sugarcane. In conclusion, drought stress application of water
deficit was associated partially with enhanced expression of P5CS gene and
following proline accumulation. Further research is required for validation and
acquiring better understanding of the role of this gene product on plant response
to drought stress. | en_US |