Abstract
Recently, the halophytic plant species, Thellungiella halophila, was discovered in high salinity coastal area in east China. T. halophila is thought to be a good model plant for the analysis of high salinity tolerance because it is closely related to Arabidopsis; such as similar morphology, small size, short life cycle, ability to self-pollinate and high seed number. There are great advantages in T. halophila for genetic and molecular analysis of salt stress tolerance. Furthermore, T. halophila genes share >90% nucleotide identity with Arabidopsis genes, and it can be transformed in planta according to Arabidopsis protocol.
T. halophila is quite salt tolerant and can grow in 500 mM NaCl medium. To analyze molecular mechanism of salt tolerance in T. halophila, we analyzed expression profiles of salt-inducible genes in T. halophilaby using Arabidopsis cDNA microarray to compare the profile with those of Arabidopsis. We also analyzed accumulation of osmoprotectants in T. halophila.
