Abstract
Key message
Enhanced glutathione content improves lateral root development by positively regulating the transcripts of root development genes responsive to glutathione treatment, thereby increasing the overall productivity of rice plants.
Abstract
Glutathione is primarily known as a cellular antioxidant molecule, but its role in lateral root development in rice plants has not been elucidated. Here, we have investigated its role in lateral root development of rice Oryza sativa L. Exogenous glutathione (GSH) promoted both the number and length of lateral roots in rice, and the GSH biosynthesis inhibitor buthionine sulfoximine (BSO) significantly reduced these parameters, compared to untreated plants. The inhibition by BSO was reversed with exogenous GSH. Transcript profiling by RNA-seq revealed that expression of the transcription factor genes DREB and ERF and the hormone-related genes AOS, LOX, JAZ, and SAUR were significantly downregulated in the BSO-treated plants and, in contrast, upregulated in plants treated with GSH and with GSH and BSO together. We generated OsGS-overexpressing transgenic plants in which the transgene is controlled by the abiotic-stress-inducible OsRab21 promoter to study the effect of endogenously increased GSH levels. In cold stress, transgenic rice plants enhanced stress tolerance and lateral root development by maintaining redox homeostasis and improving upregulating the expression of transcription factors and hormone-related genes involved in lateral root development. We observed improved root growth of OsGS-overexpressing plants in paddy fields compared to the wild-type controls. These traits may have alleviated transplanting stress during early growth in the field and accounted for the increased productivity. These results provide information and perspectives on the role of GSH in gene expression, lateral root development, and grain yield in rice.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by grants from the Next-Generation BioGreen 21 Program (No. PJ01366701), Rural Development Administration, Republic of Korea, and the Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF), which is funded by the Ministry of Education (2016R1A6A1A05011910), Republic of Korea.
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S-IP, Y-SK, and H-SY conceived the research and wrote the article. S-IP performed most of the experiments and analyzed data, J-JK assisted in phenotypic analyses, H-SK assisted with the GSH assay, and H-SY supervised the research.
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Table S6. Location and copy number of the recombinant DNA that was insert into OsRab21::OsGS transgenic (TR 1, 2, 3) lines according to flanking DNA sequencing (DOCX 30 kb)
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Table S7. Agronomic traits of OsGS-overexpressing transgenic plants (TR 1, 2, 3) grown in paddy fields in 2015-2018 (DOCX 84 kb)
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Park, SI., Kim, JJ., Kim, HS. et al. Enhanced glutathione content improves lateral root development and grain yield in rice plants. Plant Mol Biol 105, 365–383 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11103-020-01093-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11103-020-01093-w