Morphological and biochemical characteristics of dreb2a mutant plant grown under normal conditions

DREB transcription factors are one of the largest families of transcription factors in plants that are believed to play important regulatory functions in tolerance to environmental stress, but there is no complete information on their role in controlling the morphological and antioxidant properties of developed plants under normal conditions. In this study, some phenotypic characteristics of the dreb2a mutant and dreb1a mutant arabidopsis were compared to the wild plant under normal growth conditions. Most properties of dreb2a were comparable to those of dreb1a mutant, but significantly different from the wild type. Both mutant lines showed accelerated emergence of radicle and cotyledons, but delayed appearance of bolting. Lateral branches formed on the flowering bolt in the mutant lines were 25% less, while the flowering axes were 20% more than that in the wild type plants. Both mutant lines displayed higher total number of siliques per plant (about 10%), total number of seeds per plant (about 40%) and total seed weight per plant (about 13%), while, they had lower seed soluble protein content and the cruciferin/napin ratio, as compared to the wild type. It is noteworthy that in 14-day seedlings and leaves of the plant at the stage of reproduction in two mutant lines compared to the wild line, the activity of antioxidant superoxide dismutase and peroxidase activity was on average 35% and hydrogen peroxide was 70% higher on average. These data indicate that the change in the expression of the studied genes plays a key role in controlling the morphological and antioxidant status of the plants grown under normal conditions, and studying the cascade stages of the signal transduction managed by DREB family transcription factors can lead to a deeper understanding of the response mechanism of these plants to various environmental stresses.