Building stress tolerance through over-producing trehalose in transgenic plants.
Trehalose is a rare sugar with unique abilities to protect biomolecules from environmental stresses and is present in many bacteria, fungi and some desiccation-tolerant higher plants. Increasing trehalose accumulation in crop plants could improve drought and salinity tolerance. Transgenic plants have been developed with trehalose biosynthetic genes--a recent study on the stress-inducible overexpression of the bifunctional TPSP fusion gene in transgenic rice could offer novel strategies for improving abiotic stress tolerance in crop plants.
Penna
Suprasanna
S
Plant Cell Culture Technology Section, Nuclear Agriculture and Biotechnology Division, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Trombay, Mumbai 400 085, India. prasanna@magnum.barc.ernet.in
D002980:Climate; D003890:Desiccation; D004777:Environment; D030821:Plants, Genetically Modified / Q000378:metabolism / Q000502:physiology*; D014199:Trehalose / Q000096:biosynthesis*
D014199:Trehalose