Authors: Annalise Enger, Liz Dillard, Shrika Ravichandran, Tori Luongo, and Dr. Hong Luo
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Hong Luo
College: College of Science
Abiotic stresses, such as salt and drought, significantly affect plant development and are the major limiting factors on crop quality and productivity. Manipulation of genes involved in plant stress response facilitates plant mitigation of adverse environments. The objective of this project is to investigate the effects of specific genes on plant resistance to adverse environmental conditions. Several presentations and research papers were studied and discussed to gain knowledge on the processes of genetically engineering crops and on results of transgenic plants exhibiting improved stress responses controlled by different molecular mechanisms in past experiments. Specifically, to genetically improve perennial grasses for enhanced stress resistance, various candidate genes from rice were cloned and introduced into turfgrass cells. The genes were marked for testing to ensure they were being expressed in the regenerated transgenic turfgrass plants. The manipulated expression of rice genes in transgenic turfgrass affected plant development and led to enhanced plant resistance to multiple environmental stresses including salt, drought, heat, and nutrient deficiency. These data demonstrate the importance of biotechnology for enhancing agricultural production, especially when anticipating exponential growth in the world population as well as changes in climatic conditions.
Tori Luongo 2020 Undergraduate Research Symposium
