Recent data provide solid experimental evidence that increase in cell size of human lymphocytes, caused by osmotic stress, is not directly proportional to forward scattering intensity but rather is inversely proportional. Here, we provide arguments that this phenomenon can be quantitatively explained by means of a model based on a modified Rayleigh-Debye-Gans theory. As a consequence, the curre...

Environmental stresses such as drought, freezing, and high salinity induce osmotic stress in plant cells. The plant response to osmotic stress involves a number of physiological and developmental changes, which are made possible, in part, by the modulation of the expression of specific genes. Phosphate-induced-1 gene (PHI-1) was first isolated from phosphate-treated phosphate-starved tobacco ce...

The 70 kDa heat shock protein (Hsp70) plays a critical role in cell survival and thermotolerance in response to various stress stimuli. Two nearly identical genes, hsp70.1 and hsp70.3, in response to environmental stress, rapidly induce Hsp70. However, it remains unclear whether these two genes are differentially regulated by various stresses. To address the physiological role of the hsp70.1 an...

Stationary-phase Escherichia coli cultures showed enhanced osmotic resistance as compared with cultures in mid-logarithmic growth or preadapted to osmotic stress. The osmotolerance that developed during starvation or osmotic adaptation required de novo protein synthesis. Of the 22 polypeptides induced during osmotic shock, five were also starvation proteins.

The alleviation of oxidative damage and increased resistance to salt stress and to non-ionic osmotic stress induced by 100 mM NaCl or 100 mOsm polyethylene glycol (PEG) treatments, respectively, often correlate with a more efficient antioxidative defence systems and detoxification mechanisms. Pre-treatment of plants with salicylic acid (SA) enhanced antioxidant enzyme activities in concentratio...

low seed germination and seedling emergence is one of the main problems in saline areas. seed priming technique has been known as a challenge to improve germination and seedling emergence under different environmental stress. the objective of this research was to evaluate the effect of seed priming with gibberellin, nacl and water on seed germination and seed reserve utilization and germination...

Abscisic acid (ABA) regulates various developmental processes and stress responses in plants. Protein phosphorylation/dephosphorylation is a central post-translational modification (PTM) in ABA signaling. However, the phosphoproteins regulated by ABA under osmotic stress remain unknown in maize. In this study, maize mutant vp5 (deficient in ABA biosynthesis) and wild-type Vp5 were used to ident...

Legume root nodule nitrogen-fixing activity is severely affected by osmotic stress. Proline accumulation has been shown to induce tolerance to salt stress, and transgenic plants over-expressing Delta(1)-pyrroline-5-carboxylate synthetase (P5CS), which accumulates high levels of proline, display enhanced osmotolerance. Here, we transformed the model legume Medicago truncatula with the P5CS gene ...