By Aber Gadelrab

Faculty Mentor: Dr. April Wynn

Abstract

Global climate disruptions in differing regions are strongly impacted by flooding events. As flooding becomes more frequent, increased moisture in soil can cause waterlogging and increase stress on plants. Waterlogging results in hypoxia, or a shortage of oxygen available to the roots. Pyruvate decarboxylase (PDC) genes play an important role in plant response to waterlogged-hypoxic stress. Arabidopsis thaliana, the model plant organism, is relatively intolerant to flooding stress and contains three main PDC genes. PDC1 and PDC2 have increased expression under hypoxic conditions and growth on sugar-enriched (sucrose) media have been shown to induce PDC1 and PDC2 expression 10-20-fold. In contrast, PDC3 has been shown to be expressed in seedling roots, but little is known about PDC3 expression in plants grown on sugar-enriched media. Examination of Arabidopsis thaliana plants grown under sugar enriched hypoxic conditions, will show how PDC3 is regulated in comparison to PDC1 and PDC2. Understanding PDC3 expression will allow us to characterize this family member’s unique and shared functions within this gene family. As less optimal lands will become more utilized for agriculture, understanding the function of genes like PDC3 will allow for a better understanding of how plants could deal with increasing severity of or duration of waterlogging events.