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The Cotton GhRac6 Gene Encoding a Plant ROP/RAC Protein Improves the Plant Defense Response to Aphid Feeding

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Abstract

The plant ROP/RAC protein belongs to a subfamily of Rho family GTPases that inimitably exists in plants. It is considered an all-powerful molecular switch that modulates various plant developmental processes and plant defense responses to multifarious stresses. However, their exact roles are currently not entirely clear. Herein, the role of GhRac6, a ROP/RAC member from Gossypium hirsutum, was explored in the plant defense response to aphid feeding using transgenic technology. The deduced sequence of the GhRac6 protein is highly homologous to that of ROP/RAC proteins from other plants. GhRac6 expression was significantly upregulated in cotton leaves after damage by cotton aphids or wounding. The results of choice and no-choice tests showed that the number of aphids on GhRac6-overexpressing transgenic Arabidopsis was more than that on wild-type plants, while the secreted quantity of aphid honeydew in transgenic Arabidopsis was less than that in wild-type plants. Furthermore, the soluble sugar content and the proline content were higher in transgenic than in wild-type Arabidopsis to a certain extent. The activity of PAL and CAT in transgenic Arabidopsis was also higher than that in wild-type plants. Callose deposits were more abundant in transgenic than in wild-type Arabidopsis. The expression of related defense genes in the salicylic acid signaling pathway was considerably higher in transgenic than in wild-type Arabidopsis. These results collectively demonstrated that the cotton ROP gene GhRac6 improved the plant defense response to aphid feeding by regulating some aphid resistance indexes.

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Abbreviations

SSH:

Suppression subtractive hybridization 62

qPCR:

Quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction

EST:

Expressed sequence tag

ORF:

Open reading frame

MS:

Murashige and Skoog

PCR:

Polymerase chain reaction

PAL:

Phenylalanine ammonia lyase

CAT:

Catalase

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Funding

This work was supported by a grant from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 31471783).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Agriculture/Institute of Entomology, Yangtze University, Jingzhou, 434025, China

    Zhen Yang, Jianjian Liu, Liang Luo, Sui Ye, Yazhen Yang, Guohui Zhang, Xiangping Wang & Jianmin Zhang

  2. College of Biological Sciences, Yangtze University, Jingzhou, 434025, China

    Yazhen Yang

Authors
  1. Zhen Yang
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  2. Jianjian Liu
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  3. Liang Luo
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  4. Sui Ye
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  5. Yazhen Yang
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  6. Guohui Zhang
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  7. Xiangping Wang
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  8. Jianmin Zhang
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Contributions

Z.J.M. and Y.Y.Z. designed the research. Y.Z., L.L., L.J.J., Y.S., and Z.G.H. performed the experiments. Y.Z., Z.J.M., and W.X.P. analyzed the data and wrote the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Jianmin Zhang.

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Yang, Z., Liu, J., Luo, L. et al. The Cotton GhRac6 Gene Encoding a Plant ROP/RAC Protein Improves the Plant Defense Response to Aphid Feeding. Plant Mol Biol Rep 36, 888–896 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11105-018-1127-6

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