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Overexpression of a rice OsDREB1F gene increases salt, drought, and low temperature tolerance in both Arabidopsis and rice

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Abstract

DREB transcription factors play key roles in plant stress signalling transduction pathway, they can specifically bind to DRE/CRT element (G/ACCGAC) and activate the expression of many stress inducible genes. Here, a novel rice DREB transcription factor, OsDREB1F, was cloned and characterised via subtractive suppression hybridisation (SSH) from upland rice. Expression analysis revealed that OsDREB1F gene was induced by salt, drought, cold stresses, and also ABA application, but not by pathogen, wound, and H2O2. Subcellular localization results indicated that OsDREB1F localizes in nucleus. Yeast activity assay demonstrated that OsDREB1F gene encodes a transcription activator, and can specifically bind to DRE/CRT but not to ABRE element. Transgenic plants harbouring OsDREB1F gene led to enhanced tolerance to salt, drought, and low temperature in both rice and Arabidopsis. The further characterisation of OsDREB1F-overexpressing Arabidopsis showed that, besides activating the expression of COR genes which contain DRE/CRT element in their upstream promoter regions, the expression of rd29B and RAB18 genes were also activated, suggested that OsDREB1F may also participate in ABA-dependent pathway.

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Abbreviations

ABA:

Abscisic acid

CaMV:

Cauliflower mosaic virus

DRE:

Dehydration responsive element

DREB:

DRE binding protein

CRT:

C-repeat

CBF:

C-repeat binding factor

AP2:

APETALA2

EREBP:

Ethylene responsive element binding factor

TF:

Transcription factor

COR:

Cold regulated genes

GFP:

Green fluorescent protein

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Acknowledgements

Here we thank Prof. Weicai Yang at Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, for his generosity on use of his confocal microscope. This work was supported by grants from Chinese Academy of Sciences (KSCX2-YW-N-010) and Ministry of Science and Technology of China (2005CB120806) and also National Natural Sciences Foundation of China (30621001).

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Correspondence to Fan Chen or Chengcai Chu.

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Qiuyun Wang and Yucheng Guan contributed equally to this work.

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Wang, Q., Guan, Y., Wu, Y. et al. Overexpression of a rice OsDREB1F gene increases salt, drought, and low temperature tolerance in both Arabidopsis and rice. Plant Mol Biol 67, 589–602 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11103-008-9340-6

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