Abstract
The tonoplast and plasma membrane localized sodium (potassium)/proton antiporters have been shown to play an important role in plant resistance to salt stress. In this study, AtNHX1 and AtNHX3, two tonoplast Na+(K+)/H+ antiporter encoding genes from Arabidopsis thaliana, were expressed in poplar to investigate their biological functions in the resistance to abiotic stresses in woody plants. Transgenic poplar plants expressing either gene exhibited increased resistance to both salt and water-deficit stresses. Compared to the wild type (WT) plants, transgenic plants accumulated more sodium and potassium ions in the presence of 100 mM NaCl and showed reduced electrolyte leakage in the leaves under water stress. Furthermore, the proton-translocating and cation-dependent H+ (Na+/H+ or K+/H+) exchange activities in the tonoplast vesicles isolated from the leaves of transgenic plants were higher than in those isolated from WT plants. Therefore, constitutive expression of either AtNHX1 or AtNHX3 genetically modified the salt and water stress tolerance of transgenic poplar plants, providing a potential tool for engineering tree species with enhanced resistance to multiple abitotic stresses.
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Abbreviations
- BA:
-
benzylaminopurine
- MS:
-
Murashige and Skoog
- NAA:
-
naphthalene acetic acid
- NHX:
-
Na+/H+ exchanger
- RT-PCR:
-
reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction
- TDZ:
-
thidiazuron
- WT:
-
wild type
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Acknowledgments: This work was jointly supported by the National Science Foundation of China (NSFC) 31370670 and 31371228; the National Mega Project of GMO Crops 2014ZX0800942B; the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province of China BK2012306; Comprehensive Surveys on Saline Lake Lithium and other New Energy Resources in the North Tibetan Plateau DD20160025; the National Key R & D Program of China (2016YFD0600106); the Agricultural Seed Project of Shandong Province of China (2016LZGC018); the Modern Agricultural Industry Technology System Innovation Team of Shandong Province of China (SDAIT-02-05); and the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences XDA08030108. The first two authors contributed equally to this work
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Yang, L., Liu, H., Fu, S.M. et al. Na+/H+ and K+/H+ antiporters AtNHX1 and AtNHX3 from Arabidopsis improve salt and drought tolerance in transgenic poplar. Biol Plant 61, 641–650 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10535-017-0724-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10535-017-0724-9