In vivo assessment of salinity stress tolerance in transgenic Arabidopsis plants expressing Solanum tuberosum D200 gene

Abstract

Transgenic Arabidopsis plants expressing a potato D200 gene encoding a hypothetical protein were subjected to salinity stress and assessed for their tolerance. The D200 Arabidopsis lines exhibited increased chlorophyll content, improved stomatal conductance, less electrolyte leakage, lower accumulation of malondialdehyde (MDA), and a higher amount of proline compared to the wild type (WT) plants under salinity stress. The gene expression analysis revealed that D200 plants accumulated a significantly higher amount of mRNA transcripts of genes encoding three major antioxidant enzymes ascorbate peroxidase (APX), catalase (CAT), and superoxide dismutase (SOD). Chlorophyll a fluorescence kinetics analyses showed the D200 plants were more efficient in terms of primary photochemistry of photosystem II and performance indices. Furthermore, the quantum yields and efficiencies that represent the critical steps of photosynthetic light reactions were analyzed and it was found that D200 plants were photosynthetically more active than the WT plants under salt stress conditions. Overall, these findings suggest that the D200 gene is a potential candidate gene for developing stress-resilient crops in future.