Abstract
We have been established the Ni tolerant BY-2 cells, termed NIT cells. Recently, it was demonstrated that the increased nicotianamine (NA), which is a plant derived chelator of metals, can confer Ni tolerance to plants. To evaluate whether NA also contributes to the Ni tolerance of the NIT cells, the expression level of nicotianamine synthase gene, NtNAS, was determined by the northern analysis in the wild-type (WT) cells and the NIT cells. The accumulation of NtNAS mRNA in the NIT cells was considerably higher than that in the WT cells. Using the HPLC, we further determined the concentrations of NA in the both types of cells. Although the content of NA in the WT cells was below the detection limit, the NIT cells had extremely small amount of NA. We will further discuss the correlation between the Ni tolerance and NA among a dozen of the cloned NIT cells.
