Abstract
Key message
An ERF transcription factor OsERF101 is predominantly expressed in rice reproductive tissues and plays an important role in improving rice seed setting rate under drought stress.
Abstract
Drought reduces grain yield due to the cumulative damage effects to plant vegetative and reproductive developmental processes. However, the genes involved in these processes are still not completely understood. In this study, we identified a gene named OsERF101 as an important positive regulator in the adaptive responses to dehydration stress during the reproductive and vegetative stages. This gene encodes a member of APETALA2/Ethylene-Responsive Element Binding Protein (AP2/EREBP) family. OsERF101 was predominantly expressed in flowers, particularly in the tapetum and microspores under normal growth conditions. It was induced by drought, PEG6000 and abscisic acid (ABA) in leaves. During the vegetative stage, OsERF101-overexpression plants were more resistant to osmotic stress caused by PEG6000 compared to the control plants. They also had higher survival and seed setting rates than wild type when subjected to reproductive-stage drought stress. Further physiological analysis revealed that the pollen fertility was improved in the overexpression lines, while the knockout mutant and RNAi lines showed reduced pollen fertility and compromised drought tolerance during the reproductive stage. The increased proline content and peroxidase activity in OsERF101-overexpression plants might contribute to the improved drought-tolerance of plants. In addition, OsERF101-overexpression plants displayed ABA susceptible phenotype, in which the expression levels of ABA-responsive genes RD22, LEA3, and PODs were up-regulated. Taken together, our results indicate that OsERF101 is a gene that regulates dehydration responses during the vegetative and reproductive stages.
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Acknowledgements
This research work was supported by the projects from National Nature Science Foundation of China No. 31770274 to XG and No. 31700208 to YJ, Shanghai Science and Technology Innovation Action Plan No. 18JC1411800 to XG, the Open Research Funds of the State Key Laboratory of Genetic Engineering, Fudan University No. SKLGE-1617 to XZ, and Shanghai Engineering Research Center of Plant Germplasm Resources No. 17DZ2252700 to YJ.
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XG and HM designed the experiments. XG and YJ wrote the article. YJ, WP, XZ and XC did the experiments. ML provided assistance in manuscript preparation.
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Accession numbers Sequence data of genes reported in this paper can be found in RAP-DB (http://rapdb.dna.affrc.go.jp/) in the following numbers: OsERF101 and OsRAP2.6 (Os04g0398000), ABA8OX3 (Os09g0457100), ABA2 (Os04g0448900), GAMYB (Os01g0812000), DREB2 (Os01g0165000), LEA3 (Os05g0542500), ERF34 (Os04g0550200), POD1 (Os03g0369000), POD2 (Os01g0326300), RD22 (Os01g0733500), OsP5CS1 (Os05g0455500), OsP5CDH (Os05g0536400), OsOAT (Os03g643300), and in TAIR (http://www.arabidopsis.org): AtRAP2.6 (At1g43160) and AtRAP2.6L (At5g13330).
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Jin, Y., Pan, W., Zheng, X. et al. OsERF101, an ERF family transcription factor, regulates drought stress response in reproductive tissues. Plant Mol Biol 98, 51–65 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11103-018-0762-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11103-018-0762-5