Abstract
Understanding the molecular mechanisms of acid tolerance of plants is important to develop the bioremediation systems for acid soils with plants. A total of 23 acid-tolerant clones were previously isolated by functional screening of a soybean cDNA library with Escherichia coli expression system and were designated "soy" clones. Arabidopsis thaliana overexpressing six clones among them acquired acid tolerance. In this study, we identified their orthologous genes in A. thaliana. The organ specificity of the expression was similar to that of soy genes. Some of the knockout mutants showed hypersensitivity to acid stress. These results demonstrate the effectiveness of the screening of tolerant genes with the E. coli expression system.
