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RNAi-directed downregulation of betaine aldehyde dehydrogenase 1 (OsBADH1) results in decreased stress tolerance and increased oxidative markers without affecting glycine betaine biosynthesis in rice (Oryza sativa)

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Abstract

As an important osmoprotectant, glycine betaine (GB) plays an essential role in resistance to abiotic stress in a variety of organisms, including rice (Oryza sativa L.). However, GB content is too low to be detectable in rice, although rice genome possesses several orthologs coding for betaine aldehyde dehydrogenase (BADH) involved in plant GB biosynthesis. Rice BADH1 (OsBADH1) has been shown to be targeted to peroxisome and its overexpression resulted in increased GB biosynthesis and tolerance to abiotic stress. In this study, we demonstrated a pivotal role of OsBADH1 in stress tolerance without altering GB biosynthesis capacity, using the RNA interference (RNAi) technique. OsBADH1 was ubiquitously expressed in different organs, including roots, stems, leaves and flowers. Transgenic rice lines downregulating OsBADH1 exhibited remarkably reduced tolerance to NaCl, drought and cold stresses. The decrease of stress tolerance occurring in the OsBADH1-RNAi repression lines was associated with an elevated level of malondialdehyde content and hydrogen peroxidation. No GB accumulation was detected in transgene-positive and transgene-negative lines derived from heterozygous transgenic T0 plants. Moreover, transgenic OsBADH1-RNAi repression lines showed significantly reduced seed set and yield. In conclusion, the downregulation of OsBADH1, even though not causing any change of GB content, was accounted for the reduction of ability to dehydrogenate the accumulating metabolism-derived aldehydes and subsequently resulted in decreased stress tolerance and crop productivity. These results suggest that OsBADH1 possesses an enzyme activity to catalyze other aldehydes in addition to betaine aldehyde (the precursor of GB) and thus alleviate their toxic effects under abiotic stresses.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the National Science and Technology Key Project of China (No. 2011CB100401), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 31171179), Advanced Program of Doctoral Fund of Ministry of Education of China (20110181130009) and the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars (No. 30825030).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ministry of Education Key Laboratory for Bio-resource and Eco-environment, State Key Laboratory of Hydraulics and Mountain River Engineering, College of Life Science, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China

    Wei Tang, Jiaqi Sun, Fangfang Liu & Yongsheng Liu

  2. School of Biotechnology and Food Engineering, Hefei University of Technology, Hefei, China

    Wei Tang, Jia Liu & Yongsheng Liu

  3. Laboratory for Chemistry of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Chengdu University, Chengdu, 610106, China

    Jun Yan & Xiaojun Gou

  4. Ministry of Education Key Laboratory for Biodiversity Science and Ecological Engineering, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Fudan University, Shanghai, 200433, China

    Bao-Rong Lu

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  1. Wei Tang
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  3. Jia Liu
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Correspondence to Yongsheng Liu.

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Wei Tang and Jiaqi Sun have contributed equally to this work.

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Tang, W., Sun, J., Liu, J. et al. RNAi-directed downregulation of betaine aldehyde dehydrogenase 1 (OsBADH1) results in decreased stress tolerance and increased oxidative markers without affecting glycine betaine biosynthesis in rice (Oryza sativa). Plant Mol Biol 86, 443–454 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11103-014-0239-0

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