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Chitooligosaccharide plays essential roles in regulating proline metabolism and cold stress tolerance in rice seedlings

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Abstract

Rice is one of the most important crops around the world. The cold temperature as a major abiotic stress occurs frequently affecting rice growth and final plant yield. Chitooligosaccharide (COS) has been reported as an elicitor of plant immunity that can improve plant seedling tolerance to cold stress. However, the mechanisms on the enhanced cold tolerance is unclear. Here, we report that the rice seedlings treated by COS demonstrated good cold tolerance with promoted root vigor and plant growth. COS could increase contents of proline and glutamate in the seedlings. Moreover, expression analysis revealed COS significantly induced the transcripts of the key genes associated with the glutamate and proline biosynthesis pathway during cold stress. These results indicate that COS enhanced seedling growth and cold tolerance in rice may be caused by the osmotic regulation through the accumulations of glutamate and proline to provide significant osmo-protection.

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Acknowledgements

The study was supported by The National Key Research and Development Program of China (2017YFB0309302), The “Shu Guang” project of Shanghai Municipal Education Commission and Shanghai Education Development Foundation (15SG28), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (222201717026) and the 111 Project (B18022). We would like to thank Dr. Waheed Ahmad for English editing.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Bioreactor Engineering, R&D Center of Separation and Extraction Technology in Fermentation Industry, School of Biotechnology, East China University of Science and Technology, No. 130 Meilong Road, Shanghai, 200237, China

    Yang Zhang, Liqiang Fan, Mengyao Zhao, Qiming Chen, Zhen Qin & Liming Zhao

  2. Shanghai Collaborative Innovation Center for Biomanufacturing Technology (SCIBT), Shanghai, 200237, China

    Yang Zhang, Liqiang Fan, Mengyao Zhao, Qiming Chen, Zhen Qin & Liming Zhao

  3. Graduate School of Agricultural and Life Sciences, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

    Zhihang Feng & Toru Fujiwara

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  1. Yang Zhang
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  2. Liqiang Fan
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  3. Mengyao Zhao
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  4. Qiming Chen
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  5. Zhen Qin
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  6. Zhihang Feng
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  7. Toru Fujiwara
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  8. Liming Zhao
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Correspondence to Liming Zhao.

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Communicated by R. Aroca.

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Zhang, Y., Fan, L., Zhao, M. et al. Chitooligosaccharide plays essential roles in regulating proline metabolism and cold stress tolerance in rice seedlings. Acta Physiol Plant 41, 77 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11738-019-2864-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11738-019-2864-3

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