The Gene Expression Analysis of MYB Transcription Factors in Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) During Short Term Salinity and Cold Stresses through Quantitative RT-PCR

Authors

Abstract

Plant growth is greatly influenced by environmental stresses including water deficit, salinity and extreme temperatures. Hence, the identification of genes especially regulatory ones whose expression enables plants to adapt to or to tolerate these abiotic stresses, is very essential. MYB proteins are a superfamily of transcription factors that play regulatory roles in developmental processes and in the defense responses in plants. Members are characterized by having a structurally conserved DNA-binding domain, the MYB domain. To investigate the role of these regulatory factors and their expression pattern during stress in wheat, a number of candidate MYBs, were selected and after sequence analysis, were used for Real Time RT-PCR analysis. To extract total RNA, 13 day old seedlings of wheat were treated separately with 200 mM NaCl at 4oC tempreture for 0, 6 and 24h and than their roots as well as their shoots were subjected to sampling. Phylogenetic analysis of a number of these genes with Arabidopsis and Rice reference sequences, classified them into three groups. Also, qRT-PCR analysis revealed that the expression pattern of most of the selected genes changes in response to stress, and which can be categorized into several groups based on stress and on tissue. The results of this study can be utilized as a useful data source in the projects related to MYB genes cloning or transformation in wheat.

Keywords