Abstract
Leymus chinensis is an important grassland perennial grass. However, its drought tolerance requires to be improved. LEA (late embryogenesis abundant) genes are believed to confer resistance to drought and water deficiency. Using Agrobacterium-mediated transformation, a wheat LEA gene, TaLEA 3 , was integrated into L. chinensis. The transgenic lines showed enhanced growth ability under drought stress during which transgenic lines had increased the relative water content, leaf water potential, relative average growth rate, but decreased the malondialdehyde content compared with the non-transgenic plant. Thus, transgenic breeding is an efficient approach to enhance drought tolerance in L. chinensis.
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Acknowledgments
We are grateful to Dr Jianing Yu for the kindly supplying of TaLEA 3 gene and Dr. Guodong Wang and Dr. Haichun Jing for their critical reading of the manuscript. This research is funded by the National Basic Research Program of China (973, 2007CB108905).
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Wang, L., Li, X., Chen, S. et al. Enhanced drought tolerance in transgenic Leymus chinensis plants with constitutively expressed wheat TaLEA 3 . Biotechnol Lett 31, 313–319 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10529-008-9864-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10529-008-9864-5