Abstract
It is known that sorghum (Sorghum bicolor) has high tolerance to drought and salinity. When sorghum was treated by silicon, drought tolerance was improved (Hattori et al. 2005). These findings suggest that silicon may induce drought and/or tolerance related genes, resulting in the acquisition of tolerance. This study intend to isolate silicon-induced gene from sorghum and to analyze their function.
An increase in salinity tolerance in terms of growth was seen when sorghum was beforehand treated by silicon and we now measure physiological factors such as photosynthesis activity and sugar content. Silicon-induced genes were isolated by Suppression subtractive hybridization (SSH) between silicon treated sorghum and not treated one. As a whole, 16 kinds of clones were isolated and among them homologues of Zea mays S-adenosyl-L-methionine decarboxylase 2 and of Sorghum bicolor Sucrose synthase are present. We now determine their full sequences and analyze gene expression under environmental stresses.
