Project description:Plant basic helix-loop-helix (bHLH) transcription factors are involved in physiological and developmental processes, and also play essential roles in abiotic stresses. However, their exact roles in abiotic stress are still need to be elucidated, and most of bHLHs have not been functionally characterized. In the present study, we characterized the functional role of AtbHLH112 in response to abiotic stresses. AtbHLH112 is a nuclear-localized protein, and its nuclear-localization is induced by salt, drought and ABA. Besides binding to E-box motif, AtbHLH112 is found to bind to a novel motif with the sequence M-bM-^@M-^\GG[GT]CC[GT][GA][TA]CM-bM-^@M-^] (GCG-box), and the binding affinity is induced by salt and ABA. Gain- and loss-of-function analyses showed that the transcript level of AtbHLH112 is positively correlated with salt and drought tolerance. AtbHLH112 mediates stress tolerance by upregulating the expression of P5CS genes and decreasing the expression of P5CDH and PRODH genes to increase proline levels, and via enhancing the expression of POD and SOD genes to improve ROS scavenging ability. All data together suggested that AtbHLH112 regulates the expression of genes through binding to GCG-box and E-box to mediate the physiological stress responses, including proline biosynthesis and ROS scavenging pathways to enhance stress tolerance. Differentially expression genes of AtbHLH112-overexpression plants, mutant (SALK_033618C) plants and wild type of Columbia Arabidopsis thaliana were measured under salt stressed and normal condition for 3 hours, respectively. Three independent experiments were performed at each treatment using different plants for each experiment.
Project description:Biotic and abiotic stresses limit agricultural yields, and plants are often simultaneously exposed to multiple stresses. Combinations of stresses such as heat and drought or cold and high light intensity, have profound effects on crop performance and yeilds To analyze such responses, we initially compared transcriptome changes in ten Arabidopsis thaliana ecotypes using cold, heat, high light, salt and flagellin treatments as single stress factors or their double combinations. Arabidopsis thaliana plants of ecotypes (Col, Ler, C24, Cvi, Kas1, An1, Sha, Kyo2, Eri and Kond) were subjected to the following stress treatments: Salt, Cold, Heat, High Light (HL), Salt+Heat, Salt+HL, Cold+HL, Heat+HL, as well as FLG (Flagellin, flg22 peptide), Cold+FLG, Heat+FLG
Project description:Biotic and abiotic stresses limit agricultural yields, and plants are often simultaneously exposed to multiple stresses. Combinations of stresses such as heat and drought or cold and high light intensity, have profound effects on crop performance and yeilds To analyze such responses, we initially compared transcriptome changes in ten Arabidopsis thaliana ecotypes using cold, heat, high light, salt and flagellin treatments as single stress factors or their double combinations.
Project description:Freshwater is a limited and dwindling global resource; therefore, efficient water use is required for food crops that have high water demands, such as rice, or for the production of sustainable energy biomass. We show here that expression of the Arabidopsis HARDY (HRD) gene in rice improves water use efficiency, the ratio of biomass produced to the water used, by enhancing photosynthetic assimilation and reducing transpiration. These drought tolerant low-water-consuming rice plants exhibit increased shoot biomass under well irrigated conditions and an adaptive increase in root biomass under drought stress. The HRD gene, an AP2/ERF-like transcription factor, identified by a gain-of-function Arabidopsis mutant hrd-D having roots with enhanced strength, branching, and cortical cells, exhibits drought resistance and salt tolerance, accompanied by an enhancement in the expression of abiotic stress associated genes. Although HRD overexpression in Arabidopsis produces thicker leaves with more chloroplast-bearing mesophyll cells, in rice there is an increase in leaf biomass and bundle sheath cells that probably contribute to the enhanced photosynthesis assimilation and efficiency. HRD overexpression was also studied for clues of molecular mechanisms involved using microarrays. The results exemplify application of a gene identified from the model plant Arabidopsis for the improvement of water use efficiency coincident with drought resistance in the crop plant rice. Keywords: Genetic modification transcription factor overexpression mutant
Project description:Plants engineered for abiotic stress tolerance may soon be commercialized. The engineering of these plants typically involves the manipulation of complex multigene networks and may therefore have a greater potential to introduce pleiotropic effects than the simple monogenic traits that currently dominate the plant biotechnology market. Drought- tolerant Arabidopsis thaliana were engineered through overexpression of the transcription factor ABF3 in order to investigate unintended pleiotropic effects. In order to eliminate position effects, the Cre/lox recombination system was used to create control plant lines that contain identical T-DNA insertion sites but with the ABF3 transgene excised. This additionally allowed us to determine if Cre recombinase can cause unintended effects that impact the transcriptome. Microarray analysis of control plant lines that underwent Cre-mediated excision of the ABF3 transgene revealed only two genes that were differentially expressed in more than one plant line, suggesting that the impact of Cre recombinase on the transcriptome was minimal. In the absence of drought stress, overexpression of ABF3 had no effect on the transcriptome, but following drought stress, differences were observed in the gene expression patterns of plants overexpressing ABF3 relative to control plants. Examination of the functional distribution of the differentially expressed genes revealed strong similarity indicating that unintended pathways were not activated. In response to drought stress, overexpression of ABF3 results in a reprogramming of the drought response, which is characterized by changes in the timing or strength of expression of some drought response genes, without activating any unexpected gene networks. These results illustrate that important gene networks are highly regulated in Arabidopsis and that engineering stress tolerance may not necessarily cause extensive changes to the transcriptome.
Project description:Arabidopsis thaliana is a glycophyte with a low salt tolerance, while Eutrema is a halophyte with a very high salt tolerance. To elucidate the transcriptional basis of this difference, we performed hydroponis culture experiments where we grew plants under control conditions (25 mM NaCl) or under salt stress (200 mM NaCl for both species, 500 mM for Eutrema). Salt concentration was increased for the stress treatments by increments of 50 mM per day (25 mM on the first day). Plants were grown at the final NaCl concentration for an additional week, when rosettes were harvested for RNA isolation.Expression patterns were compared between treatments and between species.
Project description:Functional characterization of transgenic Arabidopsis plants constitutively expressing CAHB12 resulted in increased tolerance to drought stress, during distinct developmental stages, and increased tolerance to salt stress during seed germination. An insight into the gene set modulated by the ectopic expression of CAHB12 ectopic expression was provided by parallel sequencing (RNA-Seq) of high molecular weight and small RNA fractions. Classical drought responsive genes were mostly repressed, suggesting that other mechanisms are likely contributing to the tolerant phenotype exhibited by CAHB12-ectopically expressing plants, such as the pathway signaled by heat shock proteins and heat shock transcription factors.