Researchers from the Dhirubhai Ambani Life Sciences Center and the DuPont Knowledge Centre in India report the use of functional screens in microorganisms for the intial prospecting of novel genes expressed during stress in Jatropha curcas. The Jatropha plant is a well known biodiesel crop, and the identified stress genes can be utilized to enhance stress tolerance ability of the plant. The ultimate goal is to improve Jatropha productivity under stress conditions to benefit commercial plantations. The paper (published in the BMC Biotechnology journal) (URL above) describes the method as follows: "To identify genes expressed during salt tolerance, cDNA expression libraries were constructed from salt-stressed roots of J. curcas, regulated under the control of the yeast GAL1 system. Using a replica based screening, 20,000 yeast transformants were screened to identify transformants expressing heterologous gene sequences from J. curcas with enhanced ability to tolerate stress". The screen obtained 32 full length genes from Jatropha curcas that can confer abiotic stress tolerance. As part of the screening process, the conditions for salt stress in J. curcas was optimized, the salt stress parameters in yeast were defined, and three salt hypersensitive yeast strains were isolated. The authors say that the approach "provides a rapid and universal assay system for large scale screening of genes for varied abiotic stress tolerance within a short span of time". More details can be obtained from the free access article (URL above)..