Abstract
Phosphate, a favorable phosphorous form for plant, is one of major nutrient elements for growth and development in plants. Plants exhibit various physiological and biochemical responses in reaction to phosphate starvation in order to maintain phosphate homeostasis. Of them, expression of high affinity phosphate transporter gene family and efficient uptake of phosphate via them is a major physiological process for adaption to phosphate deficient environment. Although the various genetic resources of high affinity phosphate transporter are identified recently, little is known about their functions in plant that is prerequisite information before applying to crop plants to generate valuable transgenic plants. We demonstrated that Arabidopsis transgenic plants over-expressing two different high affinity phosphate transporter gens, OsPT1 and OsPT7, derived from rice, exhibit better growth responses compared with wild-type under phosphate starvation condition. Specially, OsPT7 gene has proven to be more effective to generate Arabidopsis transgenic plant tolerant to phosphate deficiency than OsPT1. Furthermore, the expression level of AtPT1 gene that is one of reporter genes specifically induced by phosphate starvation was significantly low compared with wild-type during phosphate starvation. Taken together, these results collectively suggest that over expression of OsPTl and OsPT7 genes derived from monocotyledonous plant function efficiently in the dicotyledonous plant, relieving stress response caused by phosphate starvation and leading to better growth rate.
