A better understanding of the biology, physiology, biochemistry, and development of environmentally stressed plants is needed if stress-tolerant plants are to be bioengineered. Characterization and cataloguing of cell proteins are perhaps the first steps toward identifying and isolating genes responsible for resistance to both heat and drought stresses. Because the desert-adapted tepary bean and the heat and drought-susceptible common bean are so closely related, they were selected for this model-system study, which compared protein profiles in the two varieties after they were subjected to drought and heat stresses. The results of the comparative analyses of steady state proteins showed that there were great similarities between the isolated proteins (obtained by using electrophoresis) from common beans and tepary beans. This shows that the greater heat tolerance of tepary beans is not due to the presence of unique proteins in these beans. Heat stress tolerance cold be related to protein turnover rates or differences in the lipid portion of the cell membranes. (Author abstract, from PN-ABK-546)
