Aquaporins in Cereals-Important Players in Maintaining Cell Homeostasis under Abiotic Stress.

Cereal productivity is reduced by environmental stresses such as drought, heat, elevated CO, salinity, metal toxicity and cold. Sometimes, plants are exposed to multiple stresses simultaneously. Plants must be able to make a rapid and adequate response to these environmental stimuli in order to restore their growing ability.

Methyl Jasmonate Affects Photosynthesis Efficiency, Expression of Genes and Nitrogen Homeostasis in Barley.

Jasmonates modulate many growth and developmental processes and act as stress hormones that play an important role in plant tolerance to biotic and abiotic stresses. Therefore, there is a need to identify the genes that are regulated through the jasmonate signalling pathway. Aquaporins, and among them the Tonoplast Intrinsic Proteins (TIPs), form the channels in cell membranes that are responsible for the precise regulation of the movement of water and other substrates between cell compartments.

Drought stress and re-watering affect the abundance of TIP aquaporin transcripts in barley.

Tonoplast Intrinsic Proteins (TIP) are plant aquaporins that are primarily localized in the tonoplast and play a role in the bidirectional flux of water and other substrates across a membrane. In barley, eleven members of the HvTIP gene subfamily have been identified. Here, we describe the transcription profile of the HvTIP genes in the leaves of barley seedlings being grown under optimal moisture conditions, drought stress and a re-watering phase.

TILLUS-A Rich and Renewable Source of Induced Mutations for Forward/Reverse Genetics and Pre-breeding Programs in Barley ( L.).

TILLING (Targeting Induced Local Lesions IN Genomes) is a strategy used for functional analysis of genes that combines the classical mutagenesis and a rapid, high-throughput identification of mutations within a gene of interest. TILLING has been initially developed as a discovery platform for functional genomics, but soon it has become a valuable tool in development of desired alleles for crop breeding, alternative to transgenic approach. Here we present the TILLUS ( -ING-niversity of ilesia) population created for spring barley cultivar "Sebastian" after double-treatment of seeds with two chemical mutagens: sodium azide (NaN) and N-methyl-N-nitrosourea (MNU).