Research on Salt Stress Tolerance Mutant of Arabidopsis thaliana Irradiated by Carbon Ion Beam

Abiotic stress can reduce the growth of plant heavily, and the research of salt tolerance of plant mutant is valuable to the study plant stress resistance. Dry seeds of Arabidopsis thaliana were irradiated by carbon ion beams with energy of 43.3 MeV/u provided by Heavy Ion Research Facility in Lanzhou (HIRFL). One stable mutant #197 was obtained from the progenies of the irradiated populations, the study of tolerance to salt stress of this mutant were carried out through physiological and gene transcription anlaysis. The results demonstrated:mutant #197 shown a relatively lower germination rate than wild type in salt stress conditions, meanwhile, the mutant acquired a higher ratio of green embryo than the wild type. In the molecular level, NaCl with high concentrations prompted the transcription of P5CS1 gene rapidly both in #197 muatant and the wide type, and the expression level in mutant was significantly higher than wild type. The expression of ProDH, related to proline degradation, in mutant #197 was slightly less than the wide type. Such expression patterns improved the accumulation of proline, and protect the #197 mutant from salt stress, which may lead to a lower expression of DREB2A and RD29A in mutant compared with wide type.