Iron (Fe) is an important trace mineral for plant development, and plants grown in Fe deficiency experience yield losses due to the leaf chlorosis. In addition to agronomic measures that can be taken to minimize these losses, new plant genotypes can be developed effectively through genetic engineering. While dicots such as Arabidopsis thaliana use a reduction-based strategy to uptake high amounts of iron from the rhizosphere, the chelation strategy has evolved in Gramineous plants including barley (Hordeum vulgare). In this study, barley NICOTIANAMINE SYNTHASE1 (HvNAS1) gene, which is responsible for the production of nicotianamine that can complex with iron, was cloned and expressed at a constitutive high level in Arabidopsis plants. The expression levels of Arabidopsis genes encoding for the proteins involved in iron uptake increased together with HvNAS1 in the T3 Arabidopsis plants. Moreover, the root lengths, root and stem fresh weights, ferric chelate reductase enzyme activities of the plants also increased in the transgenic Arabidopsis plants under Fe deficiency. In addition, significant increases in iron and zinc levels were determined in the roots and shoots of transgenic Arabidopsis plants. As a result, transgenic Arabidopsis plants overexpressing the barley HvNAS1 gene can take up more iron from the rhizosphere and carry this iron to the shoots. This study demonstrates the power of genetic engineering to develop Arabidopsis plants overexpressing the HvNAS1 gene and therefore tolerate iron deficiency.

Salinity stress is one of the most important and common abiotic stress factors that cause significant physiological and metabolic changes in plants, negatively affecting plant growth and development, and causing decrease in product quality and quantity. The elucidation of the molecular control mechanisms associated with salt stress tolerance is based on the activation and /or inactivation of various stress-related genes. Salt Overly Sensitive (SOS) tolerance mechanism under salt stress is of great importance in terms of salt tolerance of the plants. Although this mechanism has been studied for many years, the physiological changes that the plants give as a result of mutation of the genes in the pathway under different levels of sodium chloride (NaCl) during development have not been examined comparatively. In this study, we found that the Arabidopsis thaliana sos1-1 mutant plant showed sensitivity to 10 mM NaCl while the sos3-1 and hkt1-1 mutants showed tolerance. The sos1-1, sos3-1 and hkt1-1 mutants showed increasing sensitivity when NaCl was applied beyon 50 mM of concentration. In addition, plants did not show significant sensitivity for 1 day of stress application, while significant effects were observed in plant root length when exposed to salinity for 3 to 4 days. Col-0, hkt1-1 and sos3-1 roots treated with low levels of NaCl for a short term were positively affected in length. In the light of these results, the amount and duration of salt stress is very critical in Arabidopsis thaliana's responses to the stress and determination of molecular tolerance pathways.

WRKY transcription factors are a class of DNA-binding proteins that bind with a specific sequence C/TTGACT/C known as W-Box found in promoters of genes which are regulated by these WRKYs. From previous studies, 43 different stress responsive WRKY transcription factors in Arabidopsis thaliana, identified and then categorized in three groups viz., abiotic, biotic and both of these stresses. A comprehensive genome wide analysis including chromosomal localization, gene structure analysis, multiple sequence alignment, phylogenetic analysis and promoter analysis of these WRKY genes was carried out in this study to determine the functional homology in Arabidopsis. This analysis led to the classification of these WRKY family members into 3 major groups and subgroups and showed evolutionary relationship among these groups on the base of their functional WRKY domain, chromosomal localization and intron/exon structure. The proposed groups of these stress responsive WRKY genes and annotation based on their position on chromosomes can also be explored to determine their functional homology in other plant species in relation to different stresses. The result of the present study provides indispensable genomic information for the stress responsive WRKY transcription factors in Arabidopsis and will pave the way to explain the precise role of various AtWRKYs in plant growth and development under stressed conditions.