ARS | Publication request: Sequence and phylogenetic analyses of diverse plant dehydrins and their promoters: do they reflect survival in different environments?

Submitted to: Plant and Animal Genome
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: November 25, 2009
Publication Date: January 17, 2010
Citation: Bassett, C.L., Gasic, K., Dardick, C.D., Wisniewski, M.E., Fisher, K. 2010. Sequence and phylogenetic analyses of diverse plant dehydrins and their promoters: do they reflect survival in different environments?. Plant and Animal Genome.

Technical Abstract: Dehydrins have been associated with response to various abiotic stresses. In Arabidopsis thaliana the dehydrin gene family is comprised of ten members with diverse and overlapping stress responses. Surprisingly, rice (Oryza sativa japonica) and poplar (Populus trichocarpa) each have nine potentially functional dehydrins despite evidence of chromosomal duplication. In our effort to develop strategies for improving abiotic stress tolerance in temperate fruit trees, we have begun to study how this family of genes has contributed to plant survival after exposure to different abiotic stresses. In this study we compare the coding regions and promoters of the known peach (Prunus persica [L.] Batsch.) dehydrins to their putative homologs in different plant families and attempt to relate specific cis-acting elements found in these promoters to expression data. The results suggest that alterations in individual dehydrin expression have been coupled with the diversification of plant lineages that now occupy a variety of environmental conditions.