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Overexpression of a wheat phospholipase D gene, TaPLDα, enhances tolerance to drought and osmotic stress in Arabidopsis thaliana

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Abstract

Phospholipase D (PLD) is crucial for plant responses to stress and signal transduction, however, the regulatory mechanism of PLD in abiotic stress is not completely understood; especially, in crops. In this study, we isolated a gene, TaPLDα, from common wheat (Triticum aestivum L.). Analysis of the amino acid sequence of TaPLDα revealed a highly conserved C2 domain and two characteristic HKD motifs, which is similar to other known PLD family genes. Further characterization revealed that TaPLDα expressed differentially in various organs, such as roots, stems, leaves and spikelets of wheat. After treatment with abscisic acid (ABA), methyl jasmonate, dehydration, polyethylene glycol and NaCl, the expression of TaPLDα was up-regulated in shoots. Subsequently, we generated TaPLDα-overexpressing transgenic Arabidopsis lines under the control of the dexamethasone-inducible 35S promoter. The overexpression of TaPLDα in Arabidopsis resulted in significantly enhanced tolerance to drought, as shown by reduced chlorosis and leaf water loss, higher relative water content and lower relative electrolyte leakage than the wild type. Moreover, the TaPLDα-overexpressing plants exhibited longer roots in response to mannitol treatment. In addition, the seeds of TaPLDα-overexpressing plants showed hypersensitivity to ABA and osmotic stress. Under dehydration, the expression of several stress-related genes, RD29A, RD29B, KIN1 and RAB18, was up-regulated to a higher level in TaPLDα-overexpressing plants than in wild type. Taken together, our results indicated that TaPLDα can enhance tolerance to drought and osmotic stress in Arabidopsis and represents a potential candidate gene to enhance stress tolerance in crops.

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Abbreviations

ABA:

Abscisic acid

CaMV:

Cauliflower mosaic virus

DEX:

Dexamethasone

GUS:

β-Glucuronidase

MeJA:

Methyl jasmonate

MS:

Murashige and Skoog

PA:

Phosphatidic acid

PEG:

Polyethylene glycol

PLD:

Phospholipase D

RT-PCR:

Reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction

RT-qRCR:

Real-time quantitative PCR

RWC:

Relative water content

WT:

Wild type

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Dr. Deirdre H. McLachlan (the Sainsbury Laboratory, Norwich Research Park, UK) for her critical reading of the manuscript and Dr. Xiaobin Ou (College of Life Sciences, Zhejiang University, China) for his helpful advice on the manuscript. This work was supported by Natural Science Foundation of Tianjin (11JCYBJC09100); Higher School Science and Technology Program of Tianjin (20130606); National Natural Science Foundation of China (31240024) and National High-tech R&D Program of China (2012AA10A309).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Tianjin-Bristol Research Center for the Effects of the Environment Change on Crops, Tianjin Agricultural University, Tianjin, 300384, China

    Junbin Wang, Bo Ding, Yaolin Guo, Ming Li, Shuaijun Chen, Guozhong Huang & Xiaodong Xie

  2. College of Basic Sciences, Tianjin Agricultural University, Tianjin, 300384, China

    Junbin Wang

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  1. Junbin Wang
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  2. Bo Ding
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  3. Yaolin Guo
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  7. Xiaodong Xie
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Correspondence to Xiaodong Xie.

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Wang, J., Ding, B., Guo, Y. et al. Overexpression of a wheat phospholipase D gene, TaPLDα, enhances tolerance to drought and osmotic stress in Arabidopsis thaliana . Planta 240, 103–115 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00425-014-2066-6

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