Study of dehydration-responsive element binding-factor gene in some Iranian bread wheat cultivars

Dehydration-responsive element binding-factor (DREB) protein is one of the transcription factors which play a key role in tolerance to environmental stresses in many plants. Drought, salinity and cold are examples of important osmotic stresses. DREB binds to stress responsive elements causing over expression of several genes and ultimately biochemical and physiological modification gives appropriate response to the related stress. The main property of DREB gene is AP2 domain a conserved sequence that its protein product binds to a specific sequence of DNA. In this research, isolation and characterization of DREB gene from some native or cultivated Iranian bread wheat were studied. These cultivars named Omid, Sardari and Zarrin were semi sensitive, resistant, and semi resistant to cold stress respectively. DNA and mRNA extraction, cDNA synthesis, specific primer design, PCR, Electrophoresis, column purification and DNA sequencing, led to identify the sequences of this gene in three cultivars. Different bioinformatics analyses of the sequences showed that they had AP2 domain and belonged to DREB subfamily. These sequences were submitted to NCBI GenBank, and were recorded as FC556848, FC556849, and FC556851 accession numbers.