Abstract: (2 Views)
Desulfurization of fossil fuels to reduce the emission of environmental pollutants is one of the major challenges facing the petroleum refining industry. This study investigated the potential of tobacco cell suspension cultures for biodesulfurization and investigated the molecular mechanisms of the response to dibenzothiophene (DBT) as a model sulfur compound. Cells were treated in sulfur-free medium with 0, 30, and 200 ppm DBT and sampled at 6-, 24-, and 48-hour intervals. Changes in the expression of four key genes involved in the sulfur metabolism pathway—APS2, SO, SULTR, and APK3—were quantitatively analyzed using quantitative real-time PCR (qPCR). The expression of the APS2 gene showed a significant decrease under all treatments. The expression of SULTR was also predominantly downregulated, except for a slight increase at 24 hours with 30 ppm DBT. The expression pattern of the SO gene showed no marked change compared to the control, whereas the APK3 gene exhibited upregulated expression in most treatments, particularly at the later time points (24 and 48 hours). In conclusion, tobacco cell suspension culture is capable of perceiving the presence of unconventional sulfur sources and responds to them through appropriate regulation of sulfur metabolic pathways. Therefore, this system can be regarded as a suitable plant model for studying the biodesulfurization process and for applications in metabolic engineering.
Article number: 3
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