Date of Award

5-26-2015

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Applied Science

First Advisor

Mariya Khodakovskaya

Abstract

This thesis project involves increasing the tolerance to abiotic stresses in rice through silencing the OsHP gene, a homolog of Arabidopsis AtClb, which has been identified as a negative regulator of response to abiotic stresses. A fragment of the OsHP gene was cloned into a Gateway entry vector pENTR/D-TOPO, and a silencing construct was created with the Gateway destination vector pANDA through an LR clonase reaction. Embryogenic callus tissue was generated from seed of the rice cultivars `Nipponbare' and `LaGrue'. Biolistic and Agrobacterium-mediated transformation procedures were used to transfer the pANDA_OsHP silencing construct into the rice callus tissue. Transformed calli were able to generate morphogenic structures on selective regenerative medium. Morphogenic callus tissue will be subjects for regeneration of transgenic rice plants with silenced OsHP gene and future stress experiments.

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