Two projects were undertaken to study the non-energy conserving alternative pathway present in the plant mitochondrial ETC. In the first project, a tobacco AOX2 gene was cloned and characterized. AOX2 showed tissue specificity in expression and could not be induced by common stresses. In the second project I carried out a physiological characterization of transgenic tobacco plants with increased or decreased expression of AOX1 subjected to cold stress. Under non-stress condition, a strong inverse relationship between levels of AOX1 and levels of oxidative damage was observed, while after cold treatment AOX1 transgenic lines and WT showed more complicated and differential responses in aspects of oxidative damage and the capacity of antioxidant system. I also discovered that the pool sizes of monosaccharides after temperature shift were proportional to AOX1 levels. These results indicated that AOX1 might have crucial but complex impacts on ROS balance and carbon metabolism during cold stress.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TORONTO/oai:tspace.library.utoronto.ca:1807/25710 |
| Date | 03 January 2011 |
| Creators | Wang, Jia Jr. |
| Contributors | Vanlerberghe, Greg |
| Source Sets | University of Toronto |
| Language | en_ca |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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