Advances in Crop Science and Technology
Open Access

Abstract

Gossypium arboreum is considered to be a rich source of stress responsive genes and EST data base revealed that mostly of its genes are uncharacterized. The full length Gossypium universal stress protein-2 (GUSP-2) gene (510 bp) was cloned in E. coli, Pichia pastoris and Gossypium hirsutum, characterized and point mutated at three positions separately at 352-354, Lysine-60 to proline (M1usp-2) and 214-216, aspartic acid-26 to serine (M2-usp-2) and 145-147, Lysine-3 to proline (M3-usp-2) to study its role in abiotic stress tolerance. It was found that heterologous expression of one mutant (M1-usp-2) provided enhanced tolerance against salt and osmotic stresses, recombinant cells have higher growth up to 10-5 dilution in spot assay as compared to Wusp-2 (wild type GUSP2), M2-usp-2 and M3-usp-2 genes. M1-usp-2 in Pichia pastoris transcript profiling exhibited significant expression (7.1-fold) to salt and (9.7) and osmotic stresses. M1-usp-2 gene was also found to enhance drought tolerance and significant expression (8.7) in CIM496-Gossypium hirsutum transgenic plants. However, little tolerance against heat and cold stresses both in recombinant yeast and bacterial cells was observed. The results from our study concluded that activity of GUSP-2 was enhanced in M1-usp-2 but wipe out in M2-usp-2 and M3-usp-2 response remained almost parallel to W-usp-2. Further, it was predicted through in silico analysis that M1-usp-2, W-usp-2 and M3-usp-2 may be directly involved in stress tolerance or function as signaling molecule to activate the stress adaptive mechanism.

Biography

Muhammd Nadeem Hafeez is currently working as a Researcher at Center for Excellence in Molecular Biology (CEMB), Lahore, Pakistan. He has expertise in gene editing, cloning and plant transformation. He has developed a first triple gene genetically engineered cotton variety of Pakistan, which confers significant resistance against biotic and abiotic stresses.
Email:chnadeemhfz@gmail.com