Abstract
Key message
A high-quality rice activation tagging population has been developed and screened for drought-tolerant lines using various water stress assays. One drought-tolerant line activated two rice glutamate receptor-like genes. Transgenic overexpression of the rice glutamate receptor-like genes conferred drought tolerance to rice and Arabidopsis.
Abstract
Rice (Oryza sativa) is a multi-billion dollar crop grown in more than one hundred countries, as well as a useful functional genetic tool for trait discovery. We have developed a population of more than 200,000 activation-tagged rice lines for use in forward genetic screens to identify genes that improve drought tolerance and other traits that improve yield and agronomic productivity. The population has an expected coverage of more than 90 % of rice genes. About 80 % of the lines have a single T-DNA insertion locus and this molecular feature simplifies gene identification. One of the lines identified in our screens, AH01486, exhibits improved drought tolerance. The AH01486 T-DNA locus is located in a region with two glutamate receptor-like genes. Constitutive overexpression of either glutamate receptor-like gene significantly enhances the drought tolerance of rice and Arabidopsis, thus revealing a novel function of this important gene family in plant biology.
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Abbreviations
- ATL:
-
Activation tagging line
- CaMV:
-
Cauliflower mosaic virus
- CTAB:
-
Cetyltrimethyl ammonium bromide
- CDS:
-
Coding sequence
- DsRed:
-
Discosoma red fluorescent protein
- GLR:
-
Glutamate receptor-like
- RNAi:
-
RNA interference
- RT-PCR:
-
Reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction
- T-DNA:
-
Transfer DNA
- UTR:
-
Untranslated region
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Acknowledgments
We thank Li Xin, Guimin Zhang, Jing Zhang, Chunxia Liu, Guangwu Chen, Xiaocui Huang, Yingbin Chen, Cong Li, Chengfeng Du, Huanming Sun, Xiuping Meng, Qiaoyan Pan, Guowen Zhang, Tom Greene, Bo Shen, and James Zhou, et al. for their contributions and supports to the research program. Thanks to the employees of Beijing Kaituo DNA Biotech Research Center, Co., Ltd., Beijing Weiming Kaituo Crop Co., Ltd., and DuPont Pioneer for their various supports. Thanks also to Binbin Lei and Shufen Li for their critical review of the manuscript. This research was supported by DuPont Pioneer ABT collaboration program.
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Communicated by K. Chong.
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Lu, G., Wang, X., Liu, J. et al. Application of T-DNA activation tagging to identify glutamate receptor-like genes that enhance drought tolerance in plants. Plant Cell Rep 33, 617–631 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00299-014-1586-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00299-014-1586-7