For years, food sourcing for ever-growing populations has been a major issue all over the world in many countries. The farming industry loses billions of dollars per year in crops due to freezing temperatures. This in turn has become one of the major issues affecting crop yield in temperate climates. The production of food from the land directly affects the people and the well-being of the country. However, Scientists of the University of Arizona discovered a critical cold tolerant gene in Arabidopsis, a flowering plant, which has the ability to acclimate and survive in cold temperatures.
This major discovery was made in 1988 and became the basis for other advances. After the scientists identified the cold responsive genes, the CBF proteins, that regulate the expression of this trait Dr. Jian-Kang Zhu and his colleagues from the Cold Springs Harbor Laboratory were reported to have discovered a major transcriptional regulator of CBF genes. This was a significant advance in the effort to understand and improve the cold tolerance in plants. In order to identify these specific genes Dr. Zhu and his colleagues performed a genetic screen with the plant which was genetically engineered to glow in the cold. Under cold stress, the luciferase/CBF3 transgene that was placed into the Arabidopsis genome would become luminescent. The bioluminescent plants were mutagenized and the plants that no longer glowed in the cold climates were selected. These mutant genes were extremely interesting as one showed ten times less luminescence after 12 hours at zero degrees Celsius than the wild-type bioluminescent plants. The scientist were particularly interested in this gene and figured out that it was a transcription factor. It was named ICE1. Over 70% of these genes are misregulated and cause the plants to exhibit severely reduced cold tolerance.
Dr. Zhu and his colleagues also expressed that the presence of ICE1 in plants leads to cold tolerance. This was a key discovery because so many places around the world were struggling with their food production. If cold sensitive plants such as, soybeans, tomatoes, potatoes, rice and barley were to be introduced to the ICE1 gene they would have the ability to better survive in cold climates. Scientists are hoping that the research from this discovery will help to improve the tolerance of crops and both increase productivity and broaden geographical range.
References:
N/A. ‘Scientists Discover Critical Cold-tolerance Gene in Arabidopisis’, Science Daily, April 11, 2003, (March 25th 2009, http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/04/030411070222.htm)
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