Manipulation of Antioxidative Mechanism in Chloroplasts

Oxidative stress is one of the major environmental stresses to plants. Reactive oxygen species (ROS) generated during metabolic processes damage cellular functions and consequently lead to cell death. Fortunately plants have in vivo defense system by which the ROS is scavenged by enzymes such as superoxide dismutase (SOD) and ascorbate peroxidase (APX). In attempts to understand the protection mechanism of plant against oxidative stress, we developed transgenic tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum cv. Xanthi) plansts thet expressed both SOD and APX in chloroplast using Agrobacterum-mediated transformation and evaluated their protection capabilities against methyl viologen (MV, paraquat) -mediated oxidative damage. Three double transformants (CAI, CA2, and CA3) expressed the chimeric CuZnSOD and chimeric APX in chloroplast, and one transformant (AM) expressed the chimeric APX and chimeric MnSOD in chloroplast. In addition, we obtained three lines of transformants (C/Al, C/A2, and A/C) that expressed the APX and SOD than control plants, and more resistant to oxidative stress caused by MV. TRansformants (C/A and A/C) overexpressing MnSOD, CuZnSOD and APX at the same time showed the highest resistance to MV-mediated oxidative stress among the transformants.