| dc.description.abstract | Salinity stress is among the major abiotic stresses that inhibit and impair plant growth
and development. Therefore, understanding of salinity tolerance mechanisms in plants is
very important in the field of biotechnology. Previous studies on different plant species
have revealed the potential of manipulating transcription factor-encoding NAC (NAM,
ATAF1/2, CUC2) genes for improving drought and salt tolerance. GmNAC085, a soybean
(Glycine max) NAC gene, has been reported to increase its expression in soybean root
and shoot tissues under dehydration and drought conditions, indicating its involvement
in plant response to water deficit. In planta characterization of GmNAC085 in
Arabidopsis also revealed its positive regulator role in enhancement of the plant
tolerance to drought. As drought and salinity cause similar negative effects to plants, in
this study, we were interested in investigating the biological function of GmNAC085 in
plant response to salt stress by using transgenic soybean plants overexpressing
GmNAC085 as studied materials. In the aspect of exploring the effect of transgene to
transcriptional profile of several stress-related genes, including manganese superoxide
dismutase (MnSOD), ascorbate peroxidase 1 (APX1), catalase (CAT), Na+/H+ antiporterencoding gene (NHX1) and proline metabolic gene (P5CS), it was found that the
transgenic plants enhanced the expression of these genes under salt stress conditions.
These obtained results provided supporting evidence for the positive contribution of
GmNAC085 in mediating plant response to salinity, suggestively via enhancement of
antioxidant enzymes, Na+/H+ antiporter-activity and biosynthesis of proline. Therefore,
deeper investigation about GmNAC085 mechanism should be conducted in future work
in order to evaluate its potential application in improving osmotic stress tolerance of
crop plants. | en_US |
