Partial characterization of rice plants overexpressing RAB24.

Abstract

Rice is a typical chilling sensitive plant. Cell suspension cultures of rice also suffer injuries at chilling temperatures. However, we found out that exogenous application of ABA at 25C induces freezing tolerance in rice cell cultures as well as in rice seedlings. We found more than 80 CBB-stainable proteins were newly expressed or increased in ABA treated cells using 2D electrophoresis. One of them was RAB24, thiol antioxidant. We cloned a homologue of RAB24 from bromegrass cells which increased freezing tolerance more drastically by exogenous ABA. We introduced the bromegrass RAB24 into rice plants using agrobacterium transformation. We determined physiological and morphological traits of the transgenic lines including some stress tolerance