Abstract
As Andropogon virginicus L. is a wild plant which shows a tolerance to Al, Zn and diamide (Ezaki et al., Plant Cell Report, 2008), we believe that it can be used as a model plant to characterize the multiple tolerant mechanism or the multiple response mechanism for abiotic stresses. In this study, we tried to isolate the genes which show Al-induction in gene-expression level by Finger printing method. Six candidates including an ABC transporter like gene (AP18-2-1) were isolated. We also tried to isolate multiple tolerant genes against metal stresses and/or oxidative stresses from the constructed cDNA library derived from Andropogon. One of the candidates (#3A-4) encodes the SAMS (S-adenosyl methionine syntase) gene. Yeast transformant carrying the rice full-length SAMS cDNA slightly showed a tolerance to Al, Zn and diamide, suggesting a multiple tolerant gene. Moreover, quantitative Real time-PCR indicated that these two genes were actually induced by Al stress, diamide Cu or Zn in root. We are now isolating the full-length cDNAs of these genes from Andropogon to characterize the gene function in the multiple stresses.
