Abstract
To understand the mechanism of cadmium tolerance and accumulation in higher plants, a large-scale screen was conducted with a T-DNA insertional collection of Arabidopsis ecotype Col-0 mutants. One line, hsc1 displayed increased sensitivity to cadmium. The average delta root elongation of the mutant was almost half of that of wild type with 50 μM Cd. Thermal asymmetric interlaced PCR was used to detect a T-DNA insertion locating in the 7th intron of an open reading frame of a gene annotated to encode triosephoshate isomerase (TPI) on Chromosome 3. TPI catalyzes the interconversion of dihydroxyacetone phosphate and D-glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate. RT-PCR indicated that the TPI transcript accumulates predominantly in the shoots of wildtype treated with 100μM Cd for one week but cannot be detectable in the shoots or roots of hsc1.
