Expression of ACDI encoding a plant DNA glycosylase-homologue on physiological and stress conditions

FLORENCIA NOTA; PAMELA RIBONE; MARÍA E. ALVAREZ

Buenos Aires

Congreso; SAIB; 2013

DNA glycosylases remove modified bases from DNA participating in Base Excision Repaeir (BER) pathway. We are studying the role of ACDI, a gene encoding a DNA glycosylase-homologue from Arabidopsis uncharacterized until present. We found that ADCI displays alternative splicing to generate two transcripts enconding proteins that conserve the DNA glycosylase domain but contain different nuclear localization motives. By analyzing the expression of ACDI-GFP fusions we found that only one variant of the protein is placed at the nucleus. The ACDI promoter contains cis-regulatory elements related with dehydration responses. We constructed ACDI:GUS transgenics plants and analyzed the reporter expression under physiological and stress conditions. ACDI expression was highly regulated to become activated in tissues supporting dehydration. To assess how can ACDI participate in abiotic stress tolerance we germinated over-expression ACDI plants in saline and oxidative stress conditions, observing enhanced tolerance of the transgenic plants under this conditions.