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Overexpression of barley nicotianamine synthase 1 confers tolerance in the sweet potato to iron deficiency in calcareous soil

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Abstract

Background and aims

Iron (Fe) is an essential micronutrient for all higher organisms. Fe is sparingly available in calcareous soils and Fe deficiency is a major agricultural problem worldwide. Nicotianamine (NA) is a metal chelator involved in metal translocation in plants. Sweet potato is an attractive crop that can grow in poor soil and thus is useful for planting in uncultivated soil. In addition, the sweet potato has recently been suggested as a source of bioethanol. Our aim is to increase NA concentration in sweet potato to ameliorate Fe deficiency.

Method

Sweet potato plants expressing the barley NA synthase 1 (HvNAS1) gene under the control of CaMV 35S promoter were produced by Agrobacterium-mediated transformation.

Results

The transgenic sweet potato exhibited tolerance to low Fe availability when grown in calcareous soil. The level of tolerance to low Fe availability was positively correlated with the HvNAS1 expression level. The NA concentration of the transgenic sweet potato leaves was up to 7.9-fold greater than that of the non-transgenic (NT) plant leaves. Furthermore, the Fe and zinc concentrations were 3- and 2.9-fold greater, respectively, in transgenic sweet potato than in NT plant leaves.

Conclusions

Our results suggest that increasing the NA concentration of sweet potato by overexpression of HvNAS1 could significantly improve agricultural productivity and energy source.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by an advanced low carbon technology research and development program (ALCA) from the Japan Science and Technology Agency (to N. K. N.), by a grant-in-aid for Young Scientists (B) (grant number 15 K18658) from JSPS KAKENHI (to T.N.) and by a grant from Uragami-zaidan (to T.N.). We are grateful to Dr. Khurram Bashir (RIKEN CSRS) for reading the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Liberal Arts, Meiji Gakuin University, 1518 Kamikurata-cho, Totsuka-ku, Yokohama, 244-8539, Japan

    Tomoko Nozoye

  2. Department of Global Agricultural Sciences, Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Sciences, The University of Tokyo, 1-1-1 Yayoi, Bunkyo-Ku, Tokyo, 113-8657, Japan

    Tomoko Nozoye, Hiromi Nakanishi & Naoko K. Nishizawa

  3. Research Institute for Bioresources and Biotechnology, Ishikawa Prefectural University, 1-308, Nonoichi, Ishikawa, 921-8836, Japan

    Motoyasu Otani, Takeshi Senoura & Naoko K. Nishizawa

Authors
  1. Tomoko Nozoye
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  2. Motoyasu Otani
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  3. Takeshi Senoura
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  4. Hiromi Nakanishi
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  5. Naoko K. Nishizawa
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Tomoko Nozoye or Naoko K. Nishizawa.

Additional information

Responsible Editor: Eric Paterson.

The amino acid sequences used in this paper are available in the RAP-DB/DDBJ/GenBank/TAIR/SoyKb nucleotide sequence databases under the accession numbers OsNAS1 (Os03g0307300), OsNAS2 (Os03g0307200), OsNAS3 (Os07g0689600), ZmNAS1 (BAB87846.1), ZmNAS2 (BAB87847.2), ZmNAS3 (BAB91326.1), HvNAS1 (BAB17827.1), HvNAS2 (BAA74582.1), HvNAS3 (BAA74581.1), HvNAS4 (BAA74583.1), HvNAS5 (Q9ZQV5), HvNAS6 (BAA74586.1), HvNAS7 (BAA74587.1), NASHOR1 (Q9XFB6.1), NASHOR2 (Q9XFB7.1), AtNAS1 (AT5G04950), AtNAS2 (AT5G56080), AtNAS3 (AT1G09240), AtNAS4 (AT1G56430), TcNAS1 (AJ300446.1), SlNAS (NP_001296307.1), TaNAS1 (CAC82913.1),Glyma19g41630.1, Glyma03g39050.1, Glyma09g04100.1, Glyma15g40180.1 and Glyma08g18710.1.

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Nozoye, T., Otani, M., Senoura, T. et al. Overexpression of barley nicotianamine synthase 1 confers tolerance in the sweet potato to iron deficiency in calcareous soil. Plant Soil 418, 75–88 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-016-3134-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-016-3134-4

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