Aims: Osmotic stress such as drought, salinity, and cold is one of the most important stresses. The aim of this study was to isolate and evaluate the genes of AREB and MPK2 in order to study the resistance to drought of tomato plants.
Materials and Methods: In this experimental study, seeds of two varieties of Tomato (Red Cloud) and (Peto Pride; resistant and susceptible to drought stress, respectively) were grown in drought treatment levels of -2 and -4. This study used 3 replications by a model based on a completely randomized block design. Sampling was done for Thiobarbituric acid reactive material (TBARM) for each treatment in 3 replications. Randomized and repeated sampling were done for molecular studies and the genes expression. AREB1 and MPK2 genes were studied, using bioinformatics resources and with the help of specific primers, making cDNA, PCR, and Electrophoresis. The analysis of variance test and SPSS 15 software were used
Findings: With increasing drought stress, most of morphological traits had a considerable decline, but cellular oxidative index increased with the increase of stress, so that TBARM increased. The expression of AREB1 was higher than that of MPK2 gene expression. The rate of similarity between LeAREB and kinase 2 protein sequences in resistant tomatoes was 31%.
Conclusion: With increasing drought stress, most morphological traits have a significant decline, but TBARM shows a significant increase with increasing stress. The AREB1 resistant drought gene is induced by the effects of drought stresses, while the expression of the MPK2 gene does not show a significant difference.