Abstract
Drought is a major abiotic stress that restricts plant growth and development. The AP2/ERF transcription factors (TFs) have been proven to play a unique role in plant growth and drought responses. In this study, the transgenic 84K poplar with ERF016 overexpression (OX) or inhibition (RNA interference, RNAi) was used to examine the function of ERF016 in plant growth, development and drought tolerance. Morphological and physiological methods were used to analyse plant growth, water content, malondialdehyde (MDA) content, proline content, antioxidant enzyme activity, soluble sugar content, soluble starch content and non-structural carbohydrate (NSC) content. Under drought stress conditions, leaf water content and relative water content, aboveground part fresh weight and underground part fresh weight of OX was significantly increased compared with RNAi and the non-transgenic wild-type (WT) plants. In terms of substance synthesis and antioxidant enzyme activity, OX had the highest contents of soluble sugar, soluble starch and NSC, and the highest activity of catalase (CAT) enzyme, which was significantly different from RNAi, but not from WT under drought treatment. Under drought conditions, proline content and peroxidase (POD) enzyme activity of OX were the lowest, which were significantly different from WT and RNAi. Compared with the RNAi and WT, OX showed obvious changes in vascular structure, yielding smaller vessels and thicker vessel walls. In addition, the number of lateral roots of OX was increased compared to WT and RNAi under drought treatment. These results provide new evidence that ERF016 regulates poplar growth and drought tolerance.
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All data generated in this study are included in this article and its supplementary information files. Any additional information required to reanalyze the data is available from the corresponding author upon request.
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Acknowledgements
Many thanks to Lin Wang, Changhong Yu, Siyuan Nan and Yajing Li of Shanxi Agricultural University for their great help in this study.
Funding
This work was supported by the Opening Project of State Key Laboratory of Tree Genetics and Breeding (K2021104), the Natural Science Foundation of Shanxi Province (20210302123425, 202103021223150), the Biobreeding Project of Shanxi Agricultural University (YZGC140), the Scientific and Technologial Innovation Programs of Higher Education Institutions in Shanxi (2021L099) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31800564).
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SJW, YZH and KZ planned and designed the research. SQZ, ZZX, XHH, JH, LDZ and XJ performed experiments. SQZ and ZZX analysed data. SQZ wrote the manuscript.
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Zou, S., Xu, Z., Huan, X. et al. Transcription factor ERF016 regulates vascular structure and water metabolism to enhance drought tolerance in poplar. Plant Growth Regul 100, 619–632 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10725-022-00956-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10725-022-00956-0