AsianScientist (Jun 16, 2014) – A new strategy developed by researchers at the University of Hong Kong to protect flowers from freezing stress could benefit agriculture by protection of flowers against cold spells that kill flowers and adversely affect fruit and seed formation.
Protecting flowers from being harmed during freezing could improve food production in areas susceptible to freeze. This is especially relevant for citrus crops which frequently suffer from revenue losses arising from freeze that occurs in winter.
Led by Dr. Chye Mee-Len, the research group identified a protein called acyl-CoA-binding protein 6 (ACBP6) that protected flowers against freezing treatment of -7°C for one hour when over-expressed. While 54 percent of wild-type flowers remained intact after this low temperature treatment, 86 percent of the transgenic flowers survived the stress.
ACBP6 is a lipid-binding protein that can bind phosphatidylcholine, an important component of membrane lipids. The interaction between ACBP6 and phosphatidylcholine conferred freezing-tolerance in ACBP6 over-expressing flowers. This research has been published in the journal Plant & Cell Physiology.
Professor Chye said: “Finding ways to protect plants from environmental stress is an important research area given that plants form critical components in food webs and food chains on planet Earth”.
The article can be found at: Liao et al. (2014) Transgenic Arabidopsis Flowers Overexpressing Acyl-CoA-binding Protein ACBP6 Are Freezing Tolerant.
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Source: University of Hong Kong.
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