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TRANSGENIC TOBACCO WITH RICE FAE GENE EXHIBITS HIGHER WATER USE EFFICIENCY
KHIZAR HAYAT BHATTI1,2,*, AMIN SHAH3, QAISER
MEHMOOD4, SARDAR KHAN5, WUJIA HE2 AND HE CHAOZU2
Abstract: The
rice FAE encodes protein for fatty acids elongation to form very
long chain fatty acids (VLCFAs), which are the intermediates for wax
biosynthesis. Agrobacterium- mediated transgenic tobacco plants
bear rice fatty acid elongation gene (OsFAE), which has been
incorporated into their genome. Amino acids multiple sequences alignment
analysis reveals that rice FAE protein has sequence similarity with
other fatty acids elongation and wax related proteins, especially corn
FAE. Phylogenetic tree, a bioinformatics tool shows that OsFAE has a
close evolutionary origin with that of maize FAE. Sense sequence of rice
FAE gene incorporation to transgenic rice has consequently resulted into
relatively more cuticular wax on leaf surface. Scanning electron
microscopy (SEM) illustrates that transgenic tobacco leaves have
phenotypically higher cuticular waxes than of control. Our findings also
suggest that the transgenic tobacco exhibits more water use efficiency
(WUE) at both the 90% and 35% field capacity (FC) levels under
non-stress and stressful conditions, respectively.
1Department
of Botany, Institute of Chemical and Biological Sciences, University of
Gujrat, Hafiz Hayat Campus, Gujrat-50700, Pakistan.
2Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences,
Beijing 100101, P. R. China.
3Department
of Botany, University of Sargodha, Sargodha-40100, Pakistan
4Department
of Environment Sciences, COMSATS-II, Abbottabad-22010, Pakistan
5Research
Center for Eco-environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy
of Sciences, Beijing, 100085, P. R. China.
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