Cold Induction of EARLI1, a Putative Arabidopsis Lipid Transfer Protein, Is Light and Calcium Dependent

As sessile organisms, plants must adapt to their environment. One approach toward understanding this adaptation is to investigate environmental regulation of gene expression. Our focus is on the environmental regulation of EARLI1, which is activated by cold and long-day photoperiods. Cold activation of EARLI1 in short-day photoperiods is slow, requiring several hours at 4ºC to detect an increase in mRNA abundance. EARLI1 is not efficiently cold-activated in etiolated seedlings, suggesting that photomorphogenesis is necessary for its cold activation. Cold activation of EARLI1 is inhibited in the presence of the calcium channel blocker lanthanum chloride or the calcium chelator EGTA. Addition of the calcium ionophore Bay K8644 results in cold-independent activation of EARLI1. These data suggest that EARLI1 is not an immediate target of the cold response, and that calcium flux affects its expression. EARLI1 is a putative secreted protein and has motifs found in lipid transfer proteins. Over-expression of EARLI1 in transgenic plants results in reduced electrolyte leakage during freezing damage, suggesting that EARLI1 may affect membrane or cell wall stability in response to low temperature stress

Time-of-flight analysis of charge mobility in a Cu-phthalocyanine-based discotic liquid crystal semiconductor

We used a time-of-flight method to study the charge carrier mobility properties of a molecular-aligned discotic liquid crystal semiconductor based on Cu-phthalocyanine. The heated isotropic-phase semiconductor material was sandwiched between transparent electrodes coated onto glass substrates without conventional alignment layers. This was then cooled, and a discotic liquid crystal semiconductor cell was obtained, which we used to make mobility measurements. The material had a fixed molecular alignment due to the supercooling of the hexagonal columnar mesophase. It was clarified that the carrier mobility for electrons was as high as it was for holes at room temperature. The maximum value of negative charge mobility reached 2.60x10(-3) cm(2)/V s, although negative carrier mobility is often much lower than positive carrier mobility in other organic semiconductors, including conventional Cu-phthalocyanine vacuum-deposited films.ArticleAPPLIED PHYSICS LETTERS. 85(16):3474-3476 (2004)journal articl

Embryo Culture of Lycopersicon esculentum × L. peruvianum Hybrid Genotypes Possessing Heat-stable Resistance to Meloidogyne incognita

Genotypes of Lycopersicon peruvianum (L.) Mill. and L. peruvianum var. glandulosum (Rick), selected from accessions that possess resistance to Meloidogyne incognita [(Kofoid and White) Chitwood] at high soil temperature (30C), were used as male parents in crosses with L. esculentum (Mill.) susceptible cultivars UC82, Lukullus, Tropic, and male-sterile line ms-31, respectively. The incongruity barrier between the two plant species was overcome by embryo callus and embryo cloning techniques. Hybridity of the F, progeny obtained from each cross was confirmed by differences in leaf and flower morphology, plant growth habits, and by acid phosphatase isozyme phenotypes using polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. In greenhouse inoculation experiments, F1 plants were highly resistant to M. incognita in soil at 25 and 30C. These results confirmed the successful transfer and expression of heat-stable resistance to M. incognita from L. peruvianum to hybrids with L. esculentum as a preliminary step to introgressing additional root-knot nematode resistance into tomato.EEA AMBAFil: Cap, Guillermo Bartolome. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA). Estación Experimental Agropecuaria Área Metropolitana de Buenos Aires. Agencia de Extensión Rural La Plata; ArgentinaFil: Roberts, P.A. University of California, Riverside. Department of Hematology; Estados UnidosFil: Thomason, I.J. University of California, Riverside. Department of Hematology; Estados UnidosFil: Murashige, T. University of California, Riverside. Department of Hematology; Estados Unido

Hydrotropism: analysis of the root response to a moisture gradient

Hydrotropism is a genuine response of roots to a moisture gradient to avoid drought. An experimental system for the induction of hydrotropic root response in petri dishes was designed by pioneering groups in the field. This system uses split agar plates containing an osmolyte only in a region of the plate in order to generate a water potential gradient. Arabidopsis seedlings are placed on the MS agar plate so that their root tips are near the junction between plain MS medium and the region supplemented with the osmolyte. This elicits a hydrotropic response in Arabidopsis roots that can be measured as the root curvature angle

Establishment of endomycorrhizal fungi on micropropagated teak (Tectona grandis L.f.)

No abstract available

Assessing Tolerance to Heavy-Metal Stress in Arabidopsis thaliana Seedlings

The deposited book chapter is a post-print version and has been submitted to peer review.The deposited book chapter version contains attached the supplementary materials within the pdf.This publication hasn't any creative commons license associated.The deposited book chapter is part of the book series: "Environmental Responses in Plants: Methods and Protocols" (pp.197-208) published by Springer.Heavy-metal soil contamination is one of the major abiotic stress factors that, by negatively affecting plant growth and development, severely limit agricultural productivity worldwide. Plants have evolved various tolerance and detoxification strategies in order to cope with heavy-metal toxicity while ensuring adequate supply of essential micronutrients at the whole-plant as well as cellular levels. Genetic studies in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana have been instrumental in elucidating such mechanisms. The root assay constitutes a very powerful and simple method to assess heavy-metal stress tolerance in Arabidopsis seedlings. It allows the simultaneous determination of all the standard growth parameters affected by heavy-metal stress (primary root elongation, lateral root development, shoot biomass, and chlorophyll content) in a single experiment. Additionally, this protocol emphasizes the tips and tricks that become particularly useful when quantifying subtle alterations in tolerance to a given heavy-metal stress, when simultaneously pursuing a large number of plant lines, or when testing sensitivity to a wide range of heavy metals for a single line.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia grants: (EXPL/AGR-PRO/1013/2013, SFRH/BPD/44640/2008); GREEN-it "Bioresources for Sustainability": (UID/Multi/04551/2013).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

In vitro cryopreservation of date palm caulogenic meristems

Cryopreservation is the technology of choice not only for plant genetic resource preservation but also for virus eradication and for the efficient management of large-scale micropropagation. In this chapter, we describe three cryopreservation protocols (standard vitrification, droplet vitrification, and encapsulation vitrification) for date palm highly proliferating meristems that are initiated from vitro-cultures using plant growth regulator-free MS medium. The positive impact of sucrose preculture and cold hardening treatments on survival rates is significant. Regeneration rates obtained with standard vitrification, encapsulation-vitrification, and droplet-vitrification protocols can reach 30, 40, and 70%, respectively. All regenerated plants from non-cryopreserved or cryopreserved explants don't show morphological variation by maintaining genetic integrity without adverse effect of cryogenic treatment. Cryopreservation of date palm vitro-cultures enables commercial tissue culture laboratories to move to large-scale propagation from cryopreserved cell lines producing true-to-type plants after clonal field-testing trials. When comparing the cost of cryostorage and in-field conservation of date palm cultivars, tissue cryopreservation is the most cost-effective. Moreover, many of the risks linked to field conservation like erosion due to climatic, edaphic, and phytopathologic constraints are circumvented. (Résumé d'auteur