Evaluation of the effect of AtEXPA18 Arabidopsis gene on root and seed traits of tobacco transgenic lines

Expansins are non-enzymatic proteins in the cell wall, which are the main factor for cell elongation.The flexibility of the plant cell wall is regulated by acidification and activation of expansins. In this study, the effects of transferred AtEXPA18 gene on transgenic tobacco plants were investigated. To confirm the transgenic plant, RNA was extracted from the plant leaf sample and then cDNA was synthesized. After that PCR was done via a specific primer of the AtEXPA18 gene. Seeds were cultured in selective MS medium containing kanamycin. Transgenic seedlings tolerate medium which contains kanamycin and Non-transgenic seedlings got white and died. Subsequently, some of these seedlings were grown in the greenhouse and others were grown in Hoagland nutrient solution for evaluating root morphology. Greenhouse studies showed that the transgenic plants were better than non-transgenic plants in some traits such as seed weight, capsule weight, and 100 seed weight. Transgenic plants grown in Hoagland were better than non-transgenic plants in some other traits like shoot and root dry weight, and root length. Consequently, L4 transgenic line had the best performance among transgenic lines.