Influência da salinidade no desenvolvimento de funaria Hygrometrica Hedw. (funariaceae) e na expressão do gene Phypadraft_113035

Abstract

The plants developed adaptations to respond to various stress conditions generated by the environment, such as stress from cold, drought, salinity and heavy metals. These stressful conditions besides causing great losses in the production of vegetal biomass, also results in effects and actions of mechanisms of response to these stresses, which can be detected from the molecular point of view. One of these is salt stress, which can cause osmotic and oxidative stress to the affected plants. Some plants have developed salt tolerance mechanisms, these are known as halophytes. Funaria hygrometrica Hedw. (Funariaceae) is a species of halophyte moss, belonging to the same family of the model organism among the bryophytes, the moss Physcomitrella patens (Hedw.) Brunch & Schimp. F. hygrometrica produces abundant sporophytes per population and a large number of small spores that are easily dispersed through the air. This dispersion capacity makes F. hygrometrica an important model of saline stress study, since these spores can be dispersed in environments affected by this abiotic stress, such as marine environments, mainly by the possibility of carrying diaspores by marine migratory birds. The phenylpropanoid pathway (phenylpropanoid ammonia lyase-PAL), in this work represented by the gene PHYPADRAFT_113035, a homologous copy of the PAL gene, which participates in the cascade of molecular events that generate protection to the abiotic stresses, justifying the study of this gene in saline stress. The objective of the present work was to identify the development of F. hygrometrica and the quantitative expression of the PHYPADRAFT_113035 gene in the halophyte species. For the development and quantitative expression studies, F. hygrometrica spores were submitted to different immersion times in saline solution, simulating the dispersion carried out by seabirds. After an exposed spore were monitored for 30 days and their growth and survival were analyzed. The generated biomass was subjected to RNA extraction for quantitative real-time PCR experiments (qPCR). When submitted to different times of immersion in saline, F.hygrometrica did not show significant differences in its growth. The expression of the gene was increased in the initial immersion time, but decreased at the times achieved, these results corroborate with the rapid return characteristic of the PAL enzyme expression, as demonstrated by previous studies.