Abstract
Salt stress is an important abiotic factor that causes severe losses in soybean yield and quality. Therefore, breeding salt-tolerant soybean germplasm resources via genetic engineering has gained importance. Aspergillus glaucus, a halophilic fungus that exhibits significant tolerance to salt, carries the gene AgGlpF. In this study, we used the soybean cotyledonary node transformation method to transfer the AgGlpF gene into the genome of the soybean variety Williams 82 to generate salt-tolerant transgenic soybean varieties. The results of PCR, Southern blot, ddPCR, and RT-PCR indicated that AgGlpF was successfully integrated into the soybean genome and stably expressed. When subjected to salt stress conditions via treatment with 250 mM NaCl for 3 d, the transgenic soybean plants showed significant tolerance compared with wild-type plants, which exhibited withering symptoms and leaf abscission after 9 d. The results of this study indicated that the transfer of AgGlpF into the genome of soybean plants produced transgenic soybean with significantly improved salt stress tolerance.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the Basic Research Funds of JAAS (KYJF2021JQ001), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31501327), and the Youth Scientific Research Foundation of Jilin (20150520123JH). We would like to thank Editage (www.editage.cn) for English language editing.
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FWL, LZ, and SHZ planned and designed the study. FWL, HJN, and LZ performed the experiments, generated the figures, and drafted the manuscript. WY, YBX, XCT, and HJN contributed to the execution of the abiotic experiments. XDL provided the AgGlpF gene. SHZ and LZ contributed to the discussion of this manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Li, F., Ni, H., Yan, W. et al. Overexpression of an aquaporin protein from Aspergillus glaucus confers salt tolerance in transgenic soybean. Transgenic Res 30, 727–737 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11248-021-00280-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11248-021-00280-9