Enhanced water use efficiency and photosynthetic parameters: studies of transgenic Nicotiana tabacum expressing maize NADP-Malic enzyme in guard and companion cells

MÜLLER, GABRIELA LETICIA; OITAVEN, PABLO; DRINCOVICH, MARÍA FABIANA; LARA, MARÍA VALERIA

Buenos Aires

Congreso; Reunión Conjunta de Biociencias; 2017

Sociedad Argentina de Investigación Bioquímica y Biología Molecular (SAIB)

The consumption of plant materials increases at a rapid pace to satisfy the demands of a growing population for food and feed. These growing demands can only be met with improvements in plant productivity at given irrigation rates. In order to asses this proposes, a maize NADP-malic enzyme (NADP-ME) was expressed in guard cells and vascular tissues of Nicotiana tabacum, driven by the Arabidopsis thaliana Potassium channel 1 promoter. NADP-ME decarboxylates malate in the presence of NADP to produce pyruvate and CO2. The biochemical modifications in those cells and tissues, produced by maize NADP-ME, are traduced in important phenotypic modifications in the whole plant. Compared to wild type plants (WT), the transgenic tobacco lines export sugars to the phloem at higher rate than WT; this leads to higher sucrose, glucose, and fructose levels in phloem exudates and veins, they also produce significantly more biomass per water used and flower earlier than WT. Here, we aimed to study water use efficiency (WUE), differential protein expression and metabolite analysis in the transgenic tobacco lines.