Introduction of Insect Antifreeze Protein Genes into the Model Plant Arabidopsis thaliana

Injury inflicted by frost and freezing is found in all plants exposed to such damaging temperatures. Antifreeze proteins protect against these injurious temperatures by providing freeze resistance to organisms in which they occur. The expression of antifreeze proteins in a plant is a possible means of increasing the frost resistance and freeze tolerance of plants. Freeze tolerance curves of non-cold acclimated and cold acclimated A. thaliana were generated in untransformed A. thaliana. Research was conducted to obtain organisms with highly efficient antifreeze proteins. The Tenebrio molitor and Choristoneura fumiferana cDNA clones were acquired from A/F Proteins Inc. through a material transfer agreement. The antifreeze proteinencoding cDNA fragments will be cloned into an expression vector and transformed into Arabidopsis thaliana to determine if expression of antifreeze proteins will increase the freeze tolerance of A. thaliana.