Las proteínas LEA cumplen una función como protectoras de estructuras celulares, son intrínsecamente desordenadas y se acumulan abundantemente durante la etapa tardía de la embriogénesis y en respuesta a diversos tipos de estrés. Dentro de este grupo de proteínas se encuentran las dehidrinas, caracterizadas por poseer regiones conservadas llamadas segmentos K. Además, pueden contener un segmento Y, S, F y regiones ricas en histidina. En este estudio, por medio de PCR se obtuvieron genes parciales de dehidrinas de Leuchtenbergia principis y Opuntia ficus-indica con un marco de lectura abierto de 501 y 504 pb, respectivamente, codificantes a tres segmentos K y una región de histidinas. Estos genes parciales se ligaron al vector de expresión en plantas pBI121, con el que se transformaron las cepas GV3101, GV2260 y EHA105 de Agrobacterium tumefaciens. Se realizaron ensayos de transformación de explantes de hoja y peciolo de gloxinia (Sinningia speciosa) cultivadas in vitro y de plantas de Arabidopsis thaliana. Mediante prueba histoquímica de GUS y PCR se confirmó la transformación de explantes de gloxinia con las cepas GV3101 y GV2260.
LEA proteins play an important role in the protection of cellular structures; these proteins are intrinsically unordered and abundantly accumulated during late stages of embryogenesis, and in response to different types of stress. Dehydrins, a type of LEA proteins, are characterized by conserved regions called K segments. Additionally, these can contain segments Y, S and F, as well as regions rich in histidine. In this study, partial genes of dehydrins isolated from Leuchtenbergia principis and Opuntia ficus-indica were obtained using PCR. Particularly, L. principis and O. ficus-indica isolated genes consisted in fragments with an open reading frame of 501 and 504 bp, respectively, and coding sequences for three K segments and a histidine region. These partial genes were ligated to the plant expression vector pBI121, which was used further on to transform Agrobacterium tumefaciens' GV3101, GV2260 and EHA105 strains. Moreover, several transformation a experiments were carried out using Gloxinia (Sinningia speciosa) leaf and petiole explants cultivated in vitro, as well as Arabidopsis thaliana plants. GUS and PCR were used to validate the transformation of gloxinia for the strains GV3101 and GV2260.
