| Abstract : |
Heavy metal contamination is problematic in agricultural lands since plants rapidly take up toxic heavy metals and metalloids, subsequently compromising the crop quality and the consumer's health. Whilst many elements of the chelation and transport pathways have been identified, the signaling network behind the robust gene regulation remains unknown. In this study, we have developed a cadmium-induced transcriptional reporter(SULTR1;2) line and have isolated cadmium response mutants. Three groups of mutants had been identified as either non-respondent to cadmium(NRC), super respondent to cadmium(SRC) and constitutive respondent to cadmium(CRC). Two non-respondent mutants, nrc-1 and nrc-2 were previously mapped to γ-glutamylcysteine synthetase and glutathione synthetase respectively, and both showed reduced primary root growth upon heavy metal response. I found that the constitutive respondent to cadmium, crc-1, shows greatly improved primary root growth compared to control under sulfur-limited, heavy metal contaminated condition in the presence of selenium, which is chemically comparable to sulfur. |