Genetic improvement of potato tubers iron content for an increased nutritional quality

CORTELEZZI JUAN IGNACIO; MUÑIZ GARCÍA MARÍA NOELIA; GROBLY IARA MARLENE; CAPIATI DANIELA ANDREA

Congreso; XXXIII Argentinian meeting of Plant Physiology (RAFV2021); 2021

Iron is a mineral necessary for human health, and its deficiency causes anemia, a widely distributed disease that generates serious health problems. In Argentina, according to the National Nutrition and Health Survey, anemia is one of the most prevalent nutritional alterations, which occurs mainly in children whose homes have economic difficulties (35% of children 6-24 months and 20% of women of childbearing age). A partial solution to this problematic is the development of low-cost biofortified crops. In our laboratory we work withSolanum tuberosum cv. Spunta, designing strategies for tuber improvement through genetic engineering. The objective of this work is to improve the nutritional quality of potato crop by increasing the iron content in tubers. We selected two genes involved in the storage of iron in plants, Nicotianamine synthase (NAS) from Arabidopsis thaliana and the Ferritin gene from Phaseolus vulgaris. NAS generates Nicotianamine (NA), a chelator of iron cations involved in its captation and transport, whereas Ferritin codes for an iron storage protein. The Pvferritin gene was placed under the regulation of the Patatin promoter to obtain tuber specific expression of Pvferritin and the HvNAS1 under the regulation of CAMV35S for a high expression throughout the plant. The vectors pPat::Fer; p35S::AtNAS and pPat::Fer-p35S::NAS were generated using the binary vector pPZP-NPTII, and are currently being used to transform potato tuber explants to obtain Fer, NAS and Fer-NAS plants. We expect to develop transgenic potato plants that combine the advantages of the expression of both genes for the biofortification of tubers.