Abiotic stress, such as high salt or low temperature, adversely affects plant growth and development. Salt stress inhibits seed germination, retards plant growth, and accelerates senescence. Freezing or drought stress can cause cell damage and plant death. The following parameters can be used to evaluate plant tolerance to salt, drought, or freezing stress: root elongation, fresh weight gain, s...

Nematodes are the dominant soil animals of the Antarctic Dry Valleys and are capable of surviving desiccation and freezing in an anhydrobiotic state. Genes induced by desiccation stress have been successfully enumerated in nematodes; however, little is known about gene regulation by Antarctic nematodes that can survive multiple types and incidences of environmental stress. In order to reveal th...

Stress tolerance of Saccharomyces cerevisiae was examined after exposure to heat and salt shock in the presence or absence of the protein synthesis inhibitor cycloheximide. Cells heat-shocked (37 degrees C for 45 min) in the absence of cycloheximide demonstrated increased tolerance of heat, freezing and salt stress. For cells heat-shocked in the presence of cycloheximide, heat and salt toleranc...

Winter damage, especially in northern climates, is a major limitation of the utilization of perennial forages such as alfalfa. Therefore, improving freezing tolerance is imperative in alfalfa genetic breeding. However, freezing tolerance is a complex trait that is determined by many genes. To understand the complex regulation mechanisms of freezing tolerance in alfalfa, we performed small RNA s...

Low temperature is a seasonal abiotic stress that restricts native plant ranges and crop distributions. Two types of low-temperature stress can be distinguished: chilling and freezing. Much work has been done on the mechanisms by which chilling is sensed, but relatively little is known about how plants sense freezing. Recently, Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) SENSITIVE TO FREEZING2 (SFR2) wa...

in this study, accumulation of h2o2, malondialdehyde (mda) (as cold-induced oxidative stress indicators), the transcript levels of dehydrin and beta-glucosidase genes (involved in metabolic responses) was evaluated in chickpea cv. jam, using qrt-pcr during control, cold acclimation (ca), cold stress (cs), recovery, and freezing phases. results showed the existence of wide range of genetic capac...

The phytohormone ethylene regulates multiple aspects of plant growth and development and responses to environmental stress. However, the exact role of ethylene in freezing stress remains unclear. Here, we report that ethylene negatively regulates plant responses to freezing stress in Arabidopsis thaliana. Freezing tolerance was decreased in ethylene overproducer1 and by the application of the e...

To study the role of abscisic acid (ABA) in development of freezing tolerance of Arabidopsis thaliana, we exposed wild-type plants, the ABA-insensitive mutant abi1, and the ABA-deficient mutant aba-1 to low temperature (LT), exogenous ABA, and drought. Exposure of A. thaliana to drought stress resulted in a similar increase in freezing tolerance as achieved by ABA treatment or the initial stage...

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small, non-coding RNAs that play important roles in post-transcriptional regulation of their target genes, yet the transcriptional regulation of plant miRNAs by promoter is poorly understood. Here, we firstly clone pri-miR475b cDNA and its native promoter from P. suaveolens, and characterize Psu-MIR475b as class-II gene transcribed by RNA polymerase II. By 5' deletion ana...