In order to understand plant stress tolerance and its application, it is important to identify the signaling components involved in the stress-regulated gene expression. One initial step for this is generation of a stress-inducible luminescent Arabidopsis and its use in genetic mutant screening. Here, we describe how to generate a transgenic Arabidopsis line harboring a single copy of the STABILIZED1 (STA1) promoter-driven luciferase transgene (STA1p-LUC) as an example. STA1 is a pre-mRNA splicing factor Prp6p homolog and is induced by cold and heat stresses. In addition, generation of the STA1p-LUC mutant pool and a luminescence imaging-based screening for STA1p-LUC deregulated mutants are described.
Keywords: Arabidopsis; Cold stress; EMS mutagenesis; Genetic screening; Heat stress; Luminescence imaging; STA1; STABLIZED1; Thermal stress.