COLD SHOCK PROTEINS AND MULTI-STRESS PROTECTION IN RICE: MECHANISMS AND APPLICATIONS

rice is a staple food for half the world's population. however, cultivation of rice is extremely water-intensive. the abiotic stresses of drought, non-optimal temperatures, and salinity limit rice production world-wide, and are of increasing concern due to earth's changing climate. cold shock proteins (csps) are a type of protein that confer improved tolerance to all three of these stresses, but the underlying mechanisms behind this tolerance remain unknown, and are the focus of this project.this research will quantify the impact on yield and other agronomic traits of increasing csp expression in cultivated rice (oryza sativa). cold shock proteins serve as rna chaperones, a class of proteins that assist in proper folding, or refolding, of rna. ribonucleic acid (rna), in one of its many roles, is a cellular 'information molecule' that translates information encoded in dna (the genome) into enzymes and other proteins that carry out essential cellular processes. this research will investigate how csps expressed in cultivated rice affect the global set of rnas --their levels and their structures -- to bring about improved tolerance of multiple stresses. the research will characterize the effects of expressing bacterial csps, of over-expressing csps native to cultivated rice, and of expressing in cultivated rice csps originating from wild rice species that are adapted to hot and dry climates. understanding the molecular mechanisms of csp action could ultimately lead to development of rice varieties that yield well in the face of ever-growing, multiple abiotic stresses, which would benefit both commercial growers and subsistence farmers.