Improvement of physiological and biochemical properties of Arabidopsis thaliana by transfer of artemin transgene

High temperatures causes serious damage to plants, including disruption of cell hemostasis, slowness or stagnation of growth and development, and even death. When plants are exposed to high temperatures, heat shock proteins (HSP) are induced in the cell. Among HSPs are Small heat shock proteins (sHSP), which act as chaperones. They bind to proteins that have been exposed to heat stress and prevent them from incorrectly folding. The Artemin protein isolated from Artemia urmiana has a a-crystallin domain, which is characteristic of sHSP. In order to characterize the functional genomic roles of the protein in plants, artemin gene was transferred to Arabidopsis. A statistical analysis using the factorial design method was performed including two independent transgenic genotypes (art-1 and art-2) along with a wild genotype Col-0 under heat stress at 45°C. Results showed that the interaction between heat stress factors and genotypes was significant at the 1% level for most traits including germination, seedling wet and dry weight, seedling length, total protein content, catalase enzyme activity, and malondialdehyde content. All the components of germination were adversely affected by the application of heat stress. However, the transgenics still had a significantly higher seed germination and plant growth than the wild-type plants. As a result of heat stress, transgenic plants had significantly higher catalase enzyme activity and total protein content, and lower malondialdehyde levels compared with wild type plants. The results indicated that Artemin transgen in plants may cause significantly higher plant resistance to heat stress and increase plant yield.