Abstract
Heavy metal ions are toxic to plants because they replace metal ions of enzyme-cofactor and act as inorganic catalyst of active oxygen in plant cells. Plant cells make resistance to heavy metals by use of plasma membrane heavy metal exporter and vacuolar membrane transporters. However, some of them are not well studied yet. In this study, We examined possibility of novel transporters for manganese (Mn), zinc (Zn), nickel (Ni) and cadmium (Cd).
We screened two-hundreds Arabidopsis thaliana lines those were transformed by membrane transporter over expression vectors. Then we obtained four lines of which heavy metal tolerance were enhanced. One line was more resistant to manganese and zinc than control line. Three lines were more resistant to nickel and cadmium. Some of vector-tagged genes of these lines were novel genes those are conserved in plant worlds. It is possible that these genes are novel transporter genes for heavy metals in plant.
