A PtDRG1, desiccation response gene from Pyropia tenera (Rhodophyta) exhibits chaperone function and enhance abiotic stress tolerance

Joint Event on 10^th International Conference on Genomics and Molecular Biology & 6^th International Conference on Integrative Biology

May 21-23, 2018 Barcelona, Spain

Dong Woog Choi

Chonnam National University, South Korea

Posters & Accepted Abstracts: J Mol Genet Med

Abstract :

Pyropia are commercially valuable marine red algae that grow in the intertidal zone and extremely tolerant to desiccation stress. We identified and reported the desiccation response genes (DRGs) based on comparison of the transcriptomes of P. tenera. Among them, PtDRG1 encodes a polypeptide of 22.6 kDa that located in chloroplast. PtDRG1 does not share sequence homology with known genes in public database except for several red algae species. Transcription of the PtDRG1 gene was upregulated by osmotic stress induced by mannitol or H2O2 as well as desiccation stress but did not respond to heat. When PtDRG1 was over-expressed in Escherichia coli and Chlamydomonas, the transformed cells grew much better than control cells under high temperature as well as osmotic stress induced by mannitol and NaCl. In addition, PtDRG1 significantly reduced the thermal aggregation of substrate protein at heat stress condition. These results demonstrate that PtDRG1 have a chaperone function and plays a role in tolerance mechanism for abiotic stress in Pyropia. This study shows that red algae have unknown stress proteins such as PtDRG1, and that these proteins have chaperon function and play a role in stress tolerance in red algae as stress proteins such as dehydrin work in green plants.

Biography :

Dong Woog Choi has completed his PhD from Seoul National University, South Korea and Postdoctoral studies from University of California at Riverside, USA. He is the Professor in the Department of Biology Education, Chonnam National University, South Korea.
Email:dwchoi63@jnu.ac.kr