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Identification, characterization of an AP2/ERF transcription factor that promotes adventitious, lateral root formation in Populus

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Abstract

Using activation tagging in Populus, we have identified five mutant lines showing changes in their adventitious rooting. Among the affected lines, three showed increased and two decreased adventitious rooting. We have positioned the tag in the mutant lines via recovering genomic sequences flanking the left-hand border of the activation tagging vector and validated the transcriptional activation of the proximal genes. We further characterized one line in which the cause of the observed rooting phenotype was up-regulation of a gene encoding a transcription factor of the AP2/ERF family of unknown function (PtaERF003). We show, through retransformation, that this gene has a positive effect on both adventitious and lateral root proliferation. Comparative expression analyses show that the phenotype does not result from ectopic expression but rather up-regulation of the native expression pattern of the gene. PtaERF003 function is linked to auxin signal transduction pathway, as suggested by the rapid induction and accentuated phenotypes of the transgenic plants in presence of the hormone. Upregulation of PtaERF003 led to most significant metabolic changes in the shoot suggesting of a broader regulatory role of the gene that is not restricted to root growth and development. Our study shows that dominant tagging approaches in poplar can successfully identify novel molecular factors controlling adventitious and lateral root formation in woody plants. Such discoveries can lead to technologies that can increase root proliferation and, thus, have significant economic and environmental benefits.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported in part by grants from the US Department of Energy (DOE), Poplar Genome Based Research for Carbon Sequestration in Terrestrial Ecosystems (DE-FG02-06ER64185, DE-FG02-05ER64113), the Consortium for Plant Biotechnology Research, Inc. (GO12026-203A), the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) CSREES, the USDA-NRI Plant Genome program (2003-04345) and USDA CSREES, the Biotechnology Risk Assessment Research Grants Program (2004-35300-14687), Plant Feedstock Genomics for Bioenergy: A Joint Research Program of USDA and DOE (2009-65504-05767). The research at ORNL was supported by the Office of Biological and Environmental Research in the DOE Office of Science. This manuscript has been authored by a contractor of the U.S. Government under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Bioscienze e Territorio, University of Molise, 86090, Pesche, IS, Italy

    Dalila Trupiano & Gabriella Stefania Scippa

  2. School of Forest Resources and Environmental Science, Michigan Technological University, Houghton, MI, 49931-1295, USA

    Yordan Yordanov & Victor Busov

  3. Department of Biology, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, K7L 3N6, Canada

    Sharon Regan

  4. Department of Forestry and Natural Resources, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, 47907-2061, USA

    Richard Meilan

  5. Biosciences Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN, 37831-6341, USA

    Timothy Tschaplinski

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  1. Dalila Trupiano
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  2. Yordan Yordanov
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  3. Sharon Regan
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  4. Richard Meilan
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  6. Gabriella Stefania Scippa
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  7. Victor Busov
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Correspondence to Victor Busov.

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Trupiano, D., Yordanov, Y., Regan, S. et al. Identification, characterization of an AP2/ERF transcription factor that promotes adventitious, lateral root formation in Populus . Planta 238, 271–282 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00425-013-1890-4

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