Design of Ion Transporter-Based On Polypeptide Markers for Detection of Salt Tolerance in Plants

Abstract

Salinity is one of the environmental stresses that impact growth and development of plants. Sodium chloride is one of the predominant salt responsible for salinity. Beyond the allowable limit in the soil sodium chloride exerts osmotic and ionic stresses. Upon perception of the salinity stress plants undergo different mechanisms such as ion homeostasis, signaling, redox homeostasis and transport of the saline solute in the cell to overcome the salinity. It is managed by the different membrane proteins present in the plant cell that help with sodium distribution, sodium extrusion, sodium compartmentalization, osmotic balance and cellular damage repair. Some of the plant’s conserved membrane proteins that help to maintain the plants in salinity stress are Aquaporins, HKT1 (High-Affinity K+ Transporter 1), NHX1 (Na+/H+ exchangers 1), and SOS1 (Salt Overly Sensitive 1). In this thesis, we have studied two membrane proteins SOS1 and HKT1 protein that help to maintain salinity stress in plants. For the above studies, we have selected a few plants where the role of SOS1 and HKT1 are shown in salt tolerance including the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana. We have used different bioinformatics tools and servers to identify the conserved amino acid sequence and design the most appropriate polypeptide markers. The designed polypeptide markers can be used to determine the salinity stress in multiple crops