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Enhanced expression of phospholipase C 1 (ZmPLC1) improves drought tolerance in transgenic maize

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Abstract

Phosphatidylinositol-specific phospholipase C (PI-PLC) plays an important role in a variety of physiological processes in plants, including drought tolerance. It has been reported that the ZmPLC1 gene cloned from maize (Zea mays L.) encoded a PI-PLC and up-regulated the expression in maize roots under dehydration conditions (Zhai SM, Sui ZH, Yang AF, Zhang JR in Biotechnol Lett 27:799–804, 2005). In this paper, transgenic maize expressing ZmPLC1 transgenes in sense or antisense orientation were generated by Agrobacterium-mediated transformation and confirmed by Southern blot analysis. High-level expression of the transgene was confirmed by real-time RT-PCR and PI-PLC activity assay. The tolerance to drought stress (DS) of the homogenous transgenic maize plants was investigated at two developmental stages. The results demonstrated that, under DS conditions, the sense transgenic plants had higher relative water content, better osmotic adjustment, increased photosynthesis rates, lower percentage of ion leakage and less lipid membrane peroxidation, higher grain yield than the WT; whereas those expressing the antisense transgene exhibited inferior characters compared with the WT. It was concluded that enhanced expression of sense ZmPLC1 improved the drought tolerance of maize.

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Abbreviations

MDA:

Malondialdehyde

MS:

Murashige and Skoog

PEG:

Polyethylene glycol

PI-PLC:

Phosphatidylinositol-specific phospholipase C

RWC:

Relative water content

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the National High Technology Research and Development Program of China (863 Program) (No. 2006AA10A107).

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  1. School of Life Science, Shandong University, 27 Shanda South Road, Jinan, Shandong, 250100, China

    Chun-Rong Wang, Ai-Fang Yang, Gui-Dong Yue, Qiang Gao, Hai-Ying Yin & Ju-Ren Zhang

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  1. Chun-Rong Wang
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Correspondence to Ju-Ren Zhang.

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Wang, CR., Yang, AF., Yue, GD. et al. Enhanced expression of phospholipase C 1 (ZmPLC1) improves drought tolerance in transgenic maize. Planta 227, 1127–1140 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00425-007-0686-9

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