Improving salt tolerance in Arabidopsis thaliana via overexpression of a calcium sensor gene

Soil salinity is a major limiting factor of agricultural crops in the world. Increase in the level of expression of some genes that involved in salt tolerance of plants, can lead to improving performance. The salt stress induces SALT-OVERLY-SENSITIVE (SOS) pathway in Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana). SOS3 protein has an important role in this regulatory pathway. In this study, we have isolated the cDNA of AtSOS3 gene and cloned it into the pBIN61 vector under control of CaMV35S expression promoter. Then we have transformed Arabidopsis plants by Agrobacterium containing the recombinant plasmid, by Floral dip method. The mature seeds of transformed plants was selected on the culture media with kanamycin. The presence of the SOS3 transgene in the transgenic plant cells was verified by the PCR method. Analysis of second generation of transgenic and wild type plants for their salt tolerance in different doses (0,50,100,150mM) of NaCl showed that transgenic plants are more tolerant to salinity stress.