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Cotton GhERF38 gene is involved in plant response to salt/drought and ABA

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Abstract

ERF (ethylene-responsive factor) transcription factors play important roles in plant stress signaling transduction pathways. However, their specific roles during diverse abiotic stresses tolerance in Gossypium hirsutum are largely unknown. Here, a novel ERF transcription factor, designated GhERF38, homologous to AtERF38 in Arabidopsis, was isolated from cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L). GhERF38 expression was up-regulated by salt, drought and ABA treatments. Subcellular localization results indicated that GhERF38 was localized in the cell nucleus. Over-expression of GhERF38 in Arabidopsis reduced plant tolerance to salt and drought stress as indicated by a decline of seed germination, plant greenness frequency, primary roots length and the survival rate in transgenic plants compared to those of wild type plants under salt or drought treatment. Besides, stress tolerance related physiological parameters such as proline content, relative water content, soluble sugar and chlorophyll content were all significantly lower in transgenic plants than those of wild type plants under salt or drought treatment. Furthermore, over-expression of GhERF38 in Arabidopsis resulted in ABA sensitivity in transgenic plants during both seed germination and seedling growth. Interestingly, the stomatal aperture of guard cells in the transgenic plants was larger than that in transgenic plant after ABA treatment, suggesting that GhERF38-overexpressing plants were insensitive to ABA in terms of stomatal closure. Furthermore, expressions of the stress-related genes were altered in the GhERF38 transgenic plants under high salinity, drought or ABA treatment. Together, our results revealed that GhERF38 functions as a novel regulator that is involved in response to salt/drought stress and ABA signaling during plant development.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by Scientific Research Program of the Higher Education Institution of Xin Jiang (Grant No. XJEDU2014I037) and the China National Science Foundation (NSFC) (Grant No. 31401915).

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    Authors and Affiliations

    1. College of Biology and Geography Sciences, Kashgal University, Xinjiang, 844000, China

      Liufeng Ma

    2. Key Laboratory of Plant Germplasm Enhancement and Specialty Agriculture, Wuhan Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, Hubei, 430074, China

      Liufeng Ma, Longxing Hu, Jibiao Fan, Erick Amombo & Liang Chen

    3. Department of Turfgrass Sciences, College of Agronomy, Hunan Agricultural University, Changsha, China

      Longxing Hu

    4. Oilseed Research Centre, Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI), Gazipur, 1701, Bangladesh

      A. B. M. Khaldun

    5. Hubei Key Laboratory of Genetic Regulation and Integrative Biology, School of Life Sciences, Central China Normal University, Wuhan, 430079, China

      Yong Zheng

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    Correspondence to Yong Zheng or Liang Chen.

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    Liufeng Ma and Longxing Hu contributed equally to this work.

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    Ma, L., Hu, L., Fan, J. et al. Cotton GhERF38 gene is involved in plant response to salt/drought and ABA. Ecotoxicology 26, 841–854 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10646-017-1815-2

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