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Transcriptional and post-transcriptional activation of genes in salt-tolerant alfalfa cells

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Abstract

Salt-tolerant cell lines of alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.) selected in this laboratory showed increased mRNA accumulation for both nuclear- and chloroplastencoded genes involved in photosynthesis as well as in several non-photosynthetic related functions. The basis for this constitutive and salt-dependent gene activation was investigated by measuring both nuclear and plastid run-on transcription from the salt-sensitive parent line and from selected salt-tolerant lines. Plastids from tolerant cells showed a 2.5-fold increase in transcription rate over those from sensitive cells and a 4.5-fold increase if isolated from tolerant cells grown in salt. Nuclei isolated from salt-tolerant cells grown on normal medium showed higher transcription of the photosynthesis-related genes rbcS, cab1 and cab4 than those from salt-sensitive cells, confirming that the salt-tolerant cells had acquired altered transcriptional regulation of these genes. However, the major salt-induced increase in steady-state mRNA accumulation, from photosynthesis-related and other genes (alfin1, pA18 and histone H3cI and H3cII genes), was not reflected in run-on assays from these same cells. These results indicated that salt-dependent post-transcriptional mRNA stabilization led to the steady-state mRNA accumulation. The mRNA stabilization appears to be transcript specific, since transcripts of a constitutively-expressed gene (Msc27) remained unaffected by growth of the tolerant cells in 171 mM NaCl.

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Abbreviations

rbcL :

gene for Rubisco large subunit

rbcS :

gene for Rubisco small subunit

cab-1 and cab-4 :

genes encoding chlorophyll a/b-binding polypeptides

Rubisco:

ribulose-l,5-bisphosphate carboxylase-oxygenase (EC 4.1.1.39)

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Microbiology, University of Nevada Reno, 89557, Reno, NV, USA

    Ilga Winicov

  2. Department of Biochemistry, University of Nevada Reno, 89557, Reno, NV, USA

    Ilga Winicov & Muthu Krishnan

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  1. Ilga Winicov
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  2. Muthu Krishnan
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Additional information

We thank Drs. Palmer, Dudits, Pichersky, Cashmore and Wu for the gift of cloned probes and Dr. P. Balagurumoorthy for the gel scans. M. Deetken and L. Petrusa provided excellent assistance with cell cultures and M. Dlakic with computer graphics. This work was supported in part by a Hatch grant from NAES and in part by NSF DCB-8918494 and NRICGP 9401235 grants to I.W.

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Winicov, I., Krishnan, M. Transcriptional and post-transcriptional activation of genes in salt-tolerant alfalfa cells. Planta 200, 397–404 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00231395

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00231395

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