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Enhanced tolerance to drought stress in transgenic rice plants overexpressing a small heat-shock protein, sHSP17.7

  • Genetic Transformation and Hybridization
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Abstract

Exposure of rice (Oryza sativa L.) seedlings to a high temperature (42°C) for 24 h resulted in a significant increase in tolerance to drought stress. To try to determine the mechanisms of acquisition of tolerance to drought stress by heat shock, the rice small heat-shock protein gene, sHSP17.7, the product of which was shown to act as molecular chaperones in vitro and in vivo in our previous study, was overexpressed in the rice cultivar “Hoshinoyume”. Western and Northern blot analyses showed higher expression levels of sHSP17.7 protein in three transgenic lines than in one transgenic line. Drought tolerance was assessed in these transgenic lines and wild-type plants by withholding water for 6 days for evaluation of the ability of plants to continue growth after water-stress treatments. Although no significant difference was found in water potential of seedlings between transgenic lines and wild-type plants at the end of drought treatments, only transgenic seedlings with higher expression levels of sHSP17.7 protein could regrow after rewatering. Similar results were observed in survival rates after treatments with 30% polyethylene glycol (PEG) 3640 for 3 days. These results suggest that overproduction of sHSP17.7 could increase drought tolerance in transgenic rice seedlings.

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Abbreviations

HSP:

Heat shock protein

SHSP:

Small heat shock protein

PEG:

Polyethylene glycol

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Dr. Toyotaka Murakami for assistance in rice transformation and Sanae Sudo and Mika Fujii for technical assistance. This work was supported by a grant from the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries of Japan (Green Technology Project GB-1003).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Agricultural Research Center for Hokkaido Region, Hitsujigaoka 1, Toyohira-ku, Sapporo, 062-8555, Japan

    Yutaka Sato & Sakiko Yokoya

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  1. Yutaka Sato
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  2. Sakiko Yokoya
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Correspondence to Yutaka Sato.

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Communicated by M. Petersen.

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Sato, Y., Yokoya, S. Enhanced tolerance to drought stress in transgenic rice plants overexpressing a small heat-shock protein, sHSP17.7. Plant Cell Rep 27, 329–334 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00299-007-0470-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00299-007-0470-0

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