Abstract
Prolonged exposure to abiotic stresses causes oxidative stress, which affects plant development and survival. In this research, the overexpression of ZmARF1 improved tolerance to low Pi, drought and salinity stresses. The transgenic plants manifested tolerance to low Pi by their superior root phenotypic traits: root length, root tips, root surface area, and root volume, compared to wide-type (WT) plants. Moreover, the transgenic plants exhibited higher root and leaf Pi content and upregulated the high affinity Pi transporters PHT1;2 and phosphorus starvation inducing (PSI) genes PHO2 and PHR1 under low Pi conditions. Transgenic Arabidopsis displayed tolerance to drought and salt stress by maintaining higher chlorophyll content and chlorophyll fluorescence, lower water loss rates, and ion leakage, which contributed to the survival of overexpression lines compared to the WT. Transcriptome profiling identified a peroxidase gene, POX, whose transcript was upregulated by these abiotic stresses. Furthermore, we confirmed that ZmARF1 bound to the auxin response element (AuxRE) in the promoter of POX and enhanced its transcription to mediate tolerance to oxidative stress imposed by low Pi, drought and salt stress in the transgenic seedlings. These results demonstrate that ZmARF1 has significant potential for improving the tolerance of crops to multiple abiotic stresses.
Key message
ZmARF1 is a pleiotropic gene which confers tolerance to multiple abiotic stresses in ZmARF1-OE transgenic Arabidopsis as revealed by stress-response phenotypes of the transgenic lines relative to WT. ZmARF1 confers stress tolerance through a mechanism involving its association with an antioxidant enzyme, AtPOX, whose expression was simultaneously up regulated by low Pi, drought and salt stresses, whiles its promoter activity was significantly activated by ZmARF1.
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This study was supported by Innovative Research Group Project of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant numbers 32030078, 32101785 and U21A20209), General Project of Natural Science Foundation of Sichuan Province (2022NSFSC0147 and 2023NSFSC0221), the key Research Program of the Department of Science and Technology of Sichuan province, China (2021YFN0034), and The Foundation of Major Science and Technology Application Demonstration Project of Chengdu, China (2022-YF09-00054-SN).
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F.W. and Y.L. conceived the research; L.L. and Y.G. participated in its design and coordination; Y.G., B.S.Y. Y.C., and D.S. performed the experiments; L.L., F.L., J.G., and Z.Z. collected and analyzed the data; L.L. and B.S.Y. drafted the manuscript; L.L., F.W., and Y.L. revised the manuscript. L.L., Y.G. and B.S.Y. contributed equally to this study. F.W. advised on all the experiments and revised the manuscript. All the authors have read and approved the final version of this manuscript.
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Liu, L., Gong, Y., Yahaya, B.S. et al. Maize auxin response factor ZmARF1 confers multiple abiotic stresses resistances in transgenic Arabidopsis. Plant Mol Biol 114, 75 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11103-024-01470-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11103-024-01470-9