Determination with qRT-PCR of expression levels of some antioxidative enzymes in safflower types (Carthamus tinctorius L.) applied by boric acid

Abstract

Today fossil based primary energy resources like coal, petrol and natural gas have been depleting and these energy resources have ecological harm. For these reasons, new renewable energy sources are preferred in recent years. Animal fats and herbal products like soy beans, corn and sunflower are used to obtain renewable energy. Safflower (Carthamus tinctorius L.) is the leading among those herbal products. It is an enduring herbal because of its high tolerance to cold and hot; its tolerance to salinity and weeds. This fact arises the idea that its reaction to different stress factors should be analysed. Changes on three different safflower type (Balcı, Dinçer and Remzibey) brought by APX, GR, CAT and SOD enzyme activities of boric acid in different concentrations at expression level are found. Though the element boron is one of the micro elements absolutely necessary for the growing of the plants, too much boron found in the soil is a stress factor which limits the plant growth and productivity. In this study, total RNAs are isolated from the leaves of three safflower types (Balcı, Dinçer and Remzibey) grown in different boric acid concentrations (0: control, 5, 10, 15, 20 mM). These RNA samples are transformed into first strand complementary DNA (cDNA). APX, GR, CAT and SOD gene expression levels is identified with qRT-PCR as a result of normalisation with GAPDH which is determined as reference gene. Difference on gene expression levels of antioxidative enzymes based on increasing boric acid concentration in three safflower types.