Abstract
Cyanobacteria possess a CO2-concentrating mechanism including some transporters that take part in this mechanism. One of these is the sbtA encoding Na+ dependent HCO3- transporter. It have also been reported that the PxcA deficient mutant was inhibited CO2 uptake under acidic conditions.
To examine the introduction of the inorganic carbon transportation mechanism of the cyanobacteria into plants, we attempted to generate transgenic plants in which pxcA or sbtA was overexpressed. The cyanobacteria gene expression binary vectors were introduced into A.thaliana via Agrobacterium-mediated gene transfer. First generation lines were obtained by drug resistance screening. These have not visibly shown morphological abnormality. In the next generation, we examined mRNA expression level by RT-PCR and finally got some transgenic plants overexpressing each transporter gene of cyanobacteria. However, the expected protein could be detected by western blotting in the only PxcA overexpressed transgenic plants. Analysis of the effect of salt or pH conditions on growth in early period of self-pollinated transgenic plants is in progress.
