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Chrysanthemum WRKY gene CmWRKY17 negatively regulates salt stress tolerance in transgenic chrysanthemum and Arabidopsis plants

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CmWRKY17 was induced by salinity in chrysanthemum, and it might negatively regulate salt stress in transgenic plants as a transcriptional repressor.

Abstract

WRKY transcription factors play roles as positive or negative regulators in response to various stresses in plants. In this study, CmWRKY17 was isolated from chrysanthemum (Chrysanthemum morifolium). The gene encodes a 227-amino acid protein and belongs to the group II WRKY family, but has an atypical WRKY domain with the sequence WKKYGEK. Our data indicated that CmWRKY17 was localized to the nucleus in onion epidermal cells. CmWRKY17 showed no transcriptional activation in yeast; furthermore, luminescence assay clearly suggested that CmWRKY17 functions as a transcriptional repressor. DNA-binding assay showed that CmWRKY17 can bind to W-box. The expression of CmWRKY17 was induced by salinity in chrysanthemum, and a higher expression level was observed in the stem and leaf compared with that in the root, disk florets, and ray florets. Overexpression of CmWRKY17 in chrysanthemum and Arabidopsis increased the sensitivity to salinity stress. The activities of superoxide dismutase and peroxidase and proline content in the leaf were significantly lower in transgenic chrysanthemum than those in the wild type under salinity stress, whereas electrical conductivity was increased in transgenic plants. Expression of the stress-related genes AtRD29, AtDREB2B, AtSOS1, AtSOS2, AtSOS3, and AtNHX1 was reduced in the CmWRKY17 transgenic Arabidopsis compared with that in the wild-type Col-0. Collectively, these data suggest that CmWRKY17 may increase the salinity sensitivity in plants as a transcriptional repressor.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Natural Science Fund of Jiangsu Province (BK2011641, BK2012773), the Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University of the Chinese Ministry of Education (Grant nos. NCET-10-0492, NCET-12-0890), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (KYZ201112, KYZ201147), Fund for Independent Innovation of Agricultural Sciences in Jiangsu Province [CX(12)2020], and the Program for Hi-Tech Research, Jiangsu, China (Grant nos. BE2012350, BE2011325).

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Horticulture, Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing, 210095, China

    Peiling Li, Aiping Song, Chunyan Gao, Linxiao Wang, Yinjie Wang, Jing Sun, Jiafu Jiang, Fadi Chen & Sumei Chen

  2. Jiangsu Province Engineering Lab for Modern Facility Agriculture Technology & Equipment, Nanjing, 210095, China

    Peiling Li, Fadi Chen & Sumei Chen

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  1. Peiling Li
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  2. Aiping Song
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  3. Chunyan Gao
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  4. Linxiao Wang
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Correspondence to Fadi Chen or Sumei Chen.

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Communicated by L. Peña.

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299_2015_1793_MOESM1_ESM.tif

Supplementary material 1 (TIFF 2042 kb). Expression of CmWRKY17 in chrysanthemum plants under different treatments. Cold: 4 °C; Heat: 40 °C; PEG: 20 % PEG6000; ABA: 50 μM ABA

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Li, P., Song, A., Gao, C. et al. Chrysanthemum WRKY gene CmWRKY17 negatively regulates salt stress tolerance in transgenic chrysanthemum and Arabidopsis plants. Plant Cell Rep 34, 1365–1378 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00299-015-1793-x

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