Development of polypeptide-based salinity stress detection markers from plant high-affinity potassium transporter 1 (HKT1)

Abstract

Salt stress is the primary stress faced by plants and is considered a serious environmental problem. The significant salt that causes soil salinity and interferes with plant osmotic potential is sodium chloride. Plants undergo various mechanisms such as ion homeostasis, signaling, redox homeostasis, and solute transport to overcome this serious problem. Different genes and transcription factors are involved such as Na+/H + exchangers (NHXs), Salt Overly Sensitive (SOS), a Plasma Membrane Protein (PMP), and High-Affinity Potassium Transporter (HKT) get activated during salt stress and help to maintain ion transport. High-Affinity Potassium Transporter-1 (HKT1) protein is essential for salinity tolerance in plants. In this thesis, we have studied HKT1 protein from twenty-three different plants, including the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana. Using different bioinformatics servers, conserved motifs of HKT1 protein in twenty-three plants have been identified. Antigenicity prediction servers are used to identify the antigenic sequences in the conserved motifs. Finally, the polypeptides 1 and 2 are designed based on the conserved motifs and the antigenic sequences. Polypeptides are subjected to computational structure prediction and stability. The designed polypeptide markers should be applied to determine the salinity stress in multiple crops.