Lathyrus Dehydrin: A Drought Inducible cDNA Clone - Isolation and Characterization

Dehydrin like transcripts (drought inducible mRNA) accumulated in drought stressed shoots and roots of Lathyrus sativus. ABA also induced the expression of dehydrin in unstressed seedlings but to a lower extent. A cDNA expression library was prepared in lambda ZAP vector from mRNA of drought stressed shoots of Lathyrus sativus cv P-24 and screened with pea dehydrin cDNA probe. One positive clone (∼ 500 bp) was purified and characterised. The partial nucleotide sequence of the clone Lsd, contained a possible open reading frame which would encode a polypeptide with region of significant amino acid sequence similarity to dehydrin from other plant species. The genomic counterpart of Lsd cDNA was found to be present within a fragment of ∼ 3.4 and ∼ 3.2 kb in parent as well as in the somaclones of Lathyrus sativus, by using different restriction enzymes.