Characterization of a cold-responsive dehydrin promoter

Abstract

Dehydrins are type II LEA proteins induced in many plants during drought, low temperature, and high salinity to confer stress tolerance. AtERD14 is an Arabidopsis thaliana dehydrin that functions in part of the cold stress pathway. AtERD14 has chaperone-like capabilities that allow it to bind and protect various proteins from dehydration stresses. In order to determine the necessary components for cold induction of AtERD14, AtERD14prom::GFP/GUS and AtERD14prom::AtERD14 in AtERD14 KO constructs were created and stably transformed into A. thaliana. Analysis of the constructs showed the AtERD14 promoter alone was insufficient to respond to cold, and it was necessary to attach the AtERD14 coding region to the promoter to induce a cold response in ERD14. On the other hand, the RD29aprom::GFP/GUS promoter did respond to cold stress, indicating that RD29a does not require its coding region to support an increased amount of reporter activity after cold stress. The protoplast transformation system, while capable of transient expression of introduced constructs in protoplasts, was difficult for use for cold-inducible expression.