Increasing drought desistance in Arabidopsis thaliana through overexpression of cuticular wax genes

Droughts will futher the natural distaters in some parts of the planet as global warming continues to advance. According to the United Nations, climate change has been found to be responsible for a 29 percent increase in the number and duration of droughts in the last 20 years. Droughts are a major environmental stress factor that affects plant growth and productivity thus damaging the first trophic level of the food chain and causing imbalances throughout the ecosystem. Varied cuticle wax amounts alter the rates of permeability through the cuticle, thus affecting the plant’s defense against drought. Wax that comes out of the cuticle in the plant trap water and also reflects the sun rays lowering the temperature of the plant. To enhance the tolerance of the crop to drought, we have designed a genetic modification strategy to increase cuticular wax to reduce water loss thus maintaining plant hydration during a period of drought. This project consists of overexpressing genes WDS1, WAX2, and KCS16, which affect two different pathways of wax production. These two pathways are acyl-reduction and the decarbonylation pathway.The former produces alkanes, aldehydes, ketones, and secondary alcohols, while the latter produces primary alcohols and wax esters. The design utilizes three different plasmid constructs to overexpress each gene individually in three versions of the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana. These plasmid constructs utilize the inducible promoter rd29a, which is induced by drought stress to overexpress each gene. Each plasmid will be introduced into the plant through Agrobacterium-mediated transformation. Agrobacterium tumefaciens are bacteria that infect a plant transferring its DNA into the host cell, enabling easy transformation. This transformation method moves the plasmid construct from the Agrobacterium tumefaciens to the embryo of A. thaliana through a wound site. This design holds the potential to increase the plant's resistance to drought stress and improve crop production, contributing to sustainable food security solutions in water-limited environments. With our project, we can transform the future of plant-drought resistance..