Development of polypeptide-based salinity stress detection marker from plant salt tolerance related protein SOS1

Abstract

Salt stress is the primary stress faced by plants and is considered as a major environmental issue. Sodium chloride is the important salt responsible for salinity in soil and disturbs the osmotic potential of plant. Plants undergo various mechanisms such as ion homeostasis, redox homeostasis, signalling and transportation of solutes to overcome this serious issue. Genes and transcription factors such as Na+/H+ exchangers (NHXs), salt overly sensitive (SOS), plasma membrane protein (PMP), and high sodium affinity transporter (HKT) gets activated during salt stress and help to maintain ion transport. SOS1 (Salt Overly Sensitive 1) protein is essential for salinity tolerance in plants. In this thesis, we have studied SOS1 protein from eleven different plants, including the model plant Arabidopsis thalaiana. Using different bioinformatics servers, conserved motifs of sos1 protein in all 11 plants has been identified. Antigenecity prediction servers are used to identify the antigenic sequences in the conserved motifs. Finally the polypeptides are designed based on the conserved motifs and the antigenic sequences. Polypeptides are subjected to the computational structure prediction and the stability. The designed polypeptide markers should be applied to determine the salinity stress in multiple crops.