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Overexpression of Cerasus humilis ChAOX2 improves the tolerance of Arabidopsis to salt stress

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Abstract

Alternative oxidase (AOX) has a well-established involvement in plant growth and stress tolerance in many studies. In this study, we isolated and characterized the AOX2 from Cerasus humilis. The ChAOX2 Open Reading Frame (ORF) contains 1029 nucleotides and encodes 342 amino acid residues. The inferred amino acid sequence of ChAOX2 shared the highest sequence similarity with a homolog from Prunus yedoensis. The ChAOX2 transcripts were relatively abundant in the old leaves and significantly up-regulated by salt stress. Subcellular localization analysis showed that ChAOX2 was located in the mitochondria. We transformed ChAOX2 into wild-type Arabidopsis thaliana and found that compared with wild-type and aox mutant lines, heterotopic expression of ChAOX2 increased proline content, and peroxidase and superoxide dismutase activities, while decreasing relative conductivity and the reactive oxygen species level. Further, the ratio of alternate respiration to the total respiration in plants that overexpressed ChAOX2 was significantly higher than that in wild-type and mutant plants under salt stress. These results indicate that ChAOX2 plays a key role in salt tolerance.

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Acknowledgements

This work was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31901660), Heilongjiang Provincial doctoral program (LBH-Z17214), Special Project of Science and Technology Basic Resources Investigation (2019FY100502-5) and the Innovation Project of State Key Laboratory of Tree Genetics and Breeding (Northeast Forestry University). This research was supported by Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Grant 2572018CG02).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Tree Genetics and Breeding (Northeast Forestry University), Harbin, 150040, People’s Republic of China

    Li Jiao Sun, Xi Yang Zhao & Xing Shun Song

  2. Department of Genetics, College of Life Science, Northeast Forestry University, Harbin, 150040, People’s Republic of China

    Li Jiao Sun, Xiao Yu Zhao, Shao Peng Yan & Xing Shun Song

  3. College of Food Science, Key Laboratory of Dairy Science, Ministry of Education, Northeast Agricultural University, Harbin, 150030, People’s Republic of China

    Jing Ren

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  1. Li Jiao Sun
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Contributions

XSS, XYZ, and LJS conceived and designed the study. LJS carried out the main experiments, XSS, and LJS wrote the manuscript, XYZ cloned the ChAOX gene. JR and SPY analyzed the data. All authors discussed the results and commented on the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Xi Yang Zhao or Xing Shun Song.

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Sun, L.J., Zhao, X.Y., Ren, J. et al. Overexpression of Cerasus humilis ChAOX2 improves the tolerance of Arabidopsis to salt stress. 3 Biotech 11, 316 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13205-021-02871-z

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