Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

A WRKY transcription factor from Malus domestica negatively regulates dehydration stress in transgenic Arabidopsis

  • Original Paper
  • Published:
Acta Physiologiae Plantarum Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Being one of the largest families of transcriptional regulators in plants, WRKY transcription factors (TFs) have been suggested to play significant roles in regulation of various abiotic and biotic stress responses and several developmental and physiological processes. Modification and analyses of its expression patterns contribute to the elaboration of the complex signaling pathways and regulatory networks. Here, we describe the role of a WRKY TF (MdWRKY13) from apple (Malus domestica) in transgenic Arabidopsis thaliana. Overexpression of this gene in Arabidopsis resulted in drought tolerance decrease when compared to wild type plants. This result indicated that MdWRKY13 seems to be a negative regulator in drought stress response.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4

Similar content being viewed by others

Abbreviations

TFs:

Transcription factors

TF:

Transcription factor

WT:

Wild type

RT-PCR:

Reverse transcription-PCR

MDA:

Malondialdehyde

References

  • Ashraf MA, Ashraf M, Ali Q (2010) Response of two genetically diverse wheat cultivars to salt stress at different growth stages: leaf lipid peroxidation and phenolic contents. Pak J Bot 42(1):559–565

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Birkenbihl RP, Diezel C, Somssich IE (2012) Arabidopsis WRKY33 is a key transcriptional regulator of hormonal and metabolic responses toward Botrytis cinerea infection. Plant Physiol 159(1):266–285

    Article  CAS  PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Chen L, Song Y, Li S, Zhang L, Zou C, Yu D (2012) The role of WRKY transcription factors in plant abiotic stresses. Biochim Biophys Acta 1819(2):120–128

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Chinnusamy V, Schumaker K, Zhu JK (2004) Molecular genetic perspectives on cross-talk and specificity in abiotic stress signalling in plants. J Exp Bot 55(395):225–236

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Esfandiari E, Shakiba MR, Mahboob SA, Alyari H, Shahabivand S (2008) The effect of water stress on the antioxidant content, protective enzyme activities, proline content and lipid peroxidation in wheat seedling. Pak J Biol Sci 11(15):1916–1922

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Eulgem T, Rushton PJ, Robatzek S, Somssich IE (2000) The WRKY superfamily of plant transcription factors. Trends Plant Sci 5(5):199–206

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Gao JJ, Zhang Z, Peng RH, Xiong AS, Xu J, Zhu B, Yao QH (2010) Forced expression of Mdmyb10, a myb transcription factor gene from apple, enhances tolerance to osmotic stress in transgenic Arabidopsis. Mol Biol Rep 38(1):205–211

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Golldack D, Luking I, Yang O (2011) Plant tolerance to drought and salinity: stress regulating transcription factors and their functional significance in the cellular transcriptional network. Plant Cell Rep 30(8):1383–1391

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Havaux M, Lutz C, Grimm B (2003) Chloroplast membrane photostability in chlP transgenic tobacco plants deficient in tocopherols. Plant Physiol 132(1):300–310

    Article  CAS  PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Jiang W, Yu D (2009) Arabidopsis WRKY2 transcription factor mediates seed germination and postgermination arrest of development by abscisic acid. BMC Plant Biol 9:96

    Article  PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Kolotov BA, Demidov VV, Volkov SN (2003) Chlorophyll content as a primary indicator of the environment degradation due to contamination with heavy metals. Dokl Biol Sci 393:550–552

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Liu JJ, Ekramoddoullah AK (2009) Identification and characterization of the WRKY transcription factor family in Pinus monticola. Genome 52(1):77–88

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Livak KJ, Schmittgen TD (2001) Analysis of relative gene expression data using real-time quantitative PCR and the 2(-Delta Delta C(T)) method. Methods 25(4):402–408

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Lv WT, Lin B, Zhang M, Hua XJ (2011) Proline accumulation is inhibitory to Arabidopsis seedlings during heat stress. Plant Physiol 156(4):1921–1933

    Article  CAS  PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Maimoona A, Naeem I, Saddiqe Z, Ali N (2011) Analysis of total flavonoids and phenolics in different fractions of bark and needle extracts of Pinus roxburghii and Pinus wallichiana. J Med Plants Res 5(21):5216–5220

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Matsui A, Ishida J, Morosawa T, Mochizuki Y, Kaminuma E, Endo TA, Okamoto M, Nambara E, Nakajima M, Kawashima M, Satou M, Kim JM, Kobayashi N, Toyoda T, Shinozaki K, Seki M (2008) Arabidopsis transcriptome analysis under drought, cold, high-salinity and ABA treatment conditions using a tiling array. Plant Cell Physiol 49(8):1135–1149

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Mukhopadhyay A, Vij S, Tyagi AK (2004) Overexpression of a zinc-finger protein gene from rice confers tolerance to cold, dehydration, and salt stress in transgenic tobacco. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 101(16):6309–6314

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Pandey SP, Somssich IE (2009) The role of WRKY transcription factors in plant immunity. Plant Physiol 150(4):1648–1655

    Article  CAS  PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Porra R (2002) The chequered history of the development and use of simultaneous equations for the accurate determination of chlorophylls a and b. Photosynth Res 73:149–156

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Qiu Y, Yu D (2009) Over-expression of the stress-induced OsWRKY45 enhances disease resistance and drought tolerance in Arabidopsis. Environ Exp Bot 65(1):35–47

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Ren XZ, Chen ZZ, Liu Y, Zhang HR, Zhang M, Liu Q, Hong XH, Zhu JK, Gong ZZ (2010) ABO3, a WRKY transcription factor, mediates plant responses to abscisic acid and drought tolerance in Arabidopsis. Plant J 63:417–429

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Ricachenevsky FK, Sperotto RA, Menguer PK, Fett JP (2010) Identification of Fe-excess-induced genes in rice shoots reveals a WRKY transcription factor responsive to Fe, drought and senescence. Mol Biol Rep 37(8):3735–3745

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Rushton PJ, Somssich IE, Ringler P, Shen QJ (2010) WRKY transcription factors. Trends Plant Sci 15(5):247–258

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Schmutz J, Cannon SB, Schlueter J, Ma J, Mitros T, Nelson W, Hyten DL, Song Q, Thelen JJ, Cheng J, Xu D, Hellsten U, May GD, Yu Y, Sakurai T, Umezawa T, Bhattacharyya MK, Sandhu D, Valliyodan B, Lindquist E, Peto M, Grant D, Shu S, Goodstein D, Barry K, Futrell-Griggs M, Abernathy B, Du J, Tian Z, Zhu L, Gill N, Joshi T, Libault M, Sethuraman A, Zhang XC, Shinozaki K, Nguyen HT, Wing RA, Cregan P, Specht J, Grimwood J, Rokhsar D, Stacey G, Shoemaker RC, Jackson SA (2010) Genome sequence of the palaeopolyploid soybean. Nature 463(7278):178–183

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Seki M, Narusaka M, Abe H, Kasuga M, Yamaguchi-Shinozaki K, Carninci P, Hayashizaki Y, Shinozaki K (2001) Monitoring the expression pattern of 1300 Arabidopsis genes under drought and cold stresses by using a full-length cDNA microarray. Plant Cell 13(1):61–72

    CAS  PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Šircelj H, Tausz M, Grill D, Batič F (2007) Detecting different levels of drought stress in apple trees (Malus domestica Borkh.) with selected biochemical and physiological parameters. Sci Hortic 113(4):362–369

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sofo A, Dichio B, Xiloyannis C, Masia A (2004) Lipoxygenase activity and proline accumulation in leaves and roots of olive trees in response to drought stress. Physiol Plant 121(1):58–65

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Ulker B, Somssich IE (2004) WRKY transcription factors: from DNA binding towards biological function. Curr Opin Plant Biol 7(5):491–498

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Verbruggen N, Hermans C (2008) Proline accumulation in plants: a review. Amino Acids 35(4):753–759

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Wei W, Zhang Y, Han L, Guan Z, Chai T (2008) A novel WRKY transcriptional factor from Thlaspi caerulescens negatively regulates the osmotic stress tolerance of transgenic tobacco. Plant Cell Rep 27(4):795–803

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Wu C, Niu Z, Tang Q, Hua W (2008) Estimating chlorophyll content from hyperspectral vegetation indices: modeling and validation. Agric For Meteorol 148:1230–1241

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wu X, Shiroto Y, Kishitani S, Ito Y, Toriyama K (2009) Enhanced heat and drought tolerance in transgenic rice seedlings overexpressing OsWRKY11 under the control of HSP101 promoter. Plant Cell Rep 28(1):21–30

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Xue X, Liu A, Hua X (2009) Proline accumulation and transcriptional regulation of proline biosynthesis and degradation in Brassica napus. BMB Rep 42(1):28–34

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Yu S, Chong-rui A, Shao-juan J, Di-qiu Y (2010) Research progress on functional analysis of rice WRKY genes. Rice Sci 17(1):60–72

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Zhang X, Henriques R, Lin SS, Niu QW, Chua NH (2006) Agrobacterium-mediated transformation of Arabidopsis thaliana using the floral dip method. Nat Protoc 1(2):641–646

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Zhou QY, Tian AG, Zou HF, Xie ZM, Lei G, Huang J, Wang CM, Wang HW, Zhang JS, Chen SY (2008) Soybean WRKY-type transcription factor genes, GmWRKY13, GmWRKY21, and GmWRKY54, confer differential tolerance to abiotic stresses in transgenic Arabidopsis plants. Plant Biotechnol J 6(5):486–503

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Zhu JK (2002) Salt and drought stress signal transduction in plants. Annu Rev Plant Biol 53:247–273

    Article  CAS  PubMed Central  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Zhu B, Xiong AS, Peng RH, Xu J, Zhou J, Xu JT, Jin XF, Zhang Y, Hou XL, Yao QH (2008) Heat stress protection in Aspen sp1 transgenic Arabidopsis thaliana. BMB Rep 41(5):382–387

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Zhu Z, Shi J, Cao J, He M, Wang Y (2012) VpWRKY3, a biotic and abiotic stress-related transcription factor from the Chinese wild Vitis pseudoreticulata. Plant Cell Rep 31(11):2109–2120

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Zou C, Jiang W, Yu D (2010) Male gametophyte-specific WRKY34 transcription factor mediates cold sensitivity of mature pollen in Arabidopsis. J Exp Bot 61(14):3901–3914

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the State Bureau of Forestry 948 project (No. 2012-4-67) and Programs for Science and Technology Development of Shanxi Province (No. 20120311015-1).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Horticulture, Shanxi Agricultural University, Taigu, 030801, Shanxi Province, China

    Guo-feng Duan & Qun-long Liu

  2. College of Information, Shanxi Agricultural University, Taigu, 030800, Shanxi Province, China

    Li-juan Li

Authors
  1. Guo-feng Duan
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Li-juan Li
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Qun-long Liu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Qun-long Liu.

Additional information

Communicated by M. Hajduch.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Duan, Gf., Li, Lj. & Liu, Ql. A WRKY transcription factor from Malus domestica negatively regulates dehydration stress in transgenic Arabidopsis. Acta Physiol Plant 36, 541–548 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11738-013-1434-3

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Revised:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11738-013-1434-3

Keywords

Search

Navigation