A Soybean bZIP Transcription Factor GmbZIP19 Confers Multiple Biotic and Abiotic Stress Responses in Plant.

Yuan Qin,Yanhui Liu,Liping Liu,Mengyan Bai,Hanyang Cai,Youmei Huang,S V G N Priyadarshani,Man Zhang,Mengnan Chai,Fangqian Chen,Huihuang Chen,Qing He

doi:10.3390/ijms21134701

Abstract

The basic leucine zipper (bZIP) is a plant-specific transcription factor family that plays crucial roles in response to biotic and abiotic stresses. However, little is known about the function of bZIP genes in soybean. In this study, we isolated a bZIP gene, GmbZIP19, from soybean. A subcellular localization study of GmbZIP19 revealed its nucleus localization. We showed that GmbZIP19 expression was significantly induced by ABA (abscisic acid), JA (jasmonic acid) and SA (salicylic acid), but reduced under salt and drought stress conditions. Further, GmbZIP19 overexpression Arabidopsis lines showed increased resistance to S. sclerotiorum and Pseudomonas syringae associated with upregulated ABA-, JA-, ETH- (ethephon-)and SA-induced marker genes expression, but exhibited sensitivity to salt and drought stresses in association with destroyed stomatal closure and downregulated the salt and drought stresses marker genes’ expression. We generated a soybean transient GmbZIP19 overexpression line, performed a Chromatin immunoprecipitation assay and found that GmbZIP19 bound to promoters of ABA-, JA-, ETH-, and SA-induced marker genes in soybean. The yeast one-hybrid verified the combination. The current study suggested that GmbZIP19 is a positive regulator of pathogen resistance and a negative regulator of salt and drought stress tolerance.

Highlights

Soybean, an important economic crop and one of the main oil crops worldwide, is widely used as a source for plant oil and as a protein resource by humans
The genome-wide analysis of the basic leucine zipper (bZIP) transcription factor family has been conducted in soybean [17] and there are several bZIP genes’ functions reported in plants [26,27], little is known about the functions of bZIP genes in soybean
Our study showed that the salt and drought tolerance were significantly decreased in GmbZIP19-OE transgenic Arabidopsis compared to WT (Figure 4A,B and Figure 5A,B)

Summary

Introduction

An important economic crop and one of the main oil crops worldwide, is widely used as a source for plant oil and as a protein resource by humans. Various environmental conditions such as salinity, drought, temperature changes, nutritional deficiency and pathogen invasion significantly influence soybean growth and development, leading to reduced production. In order to overcome these stress conditions, plants have developed a series of response mechanisms at the physiological, morphological, cellular, biochemical and molecular levels [2,3,4]. Gene expression changes play an important role during stress response. Transcriptional factors can mediate some stress-related gene expressions and further regulate the responses to adverse stresses in plants [5,6]. One of these is the basic leucine zipper (bZIP) transcription factor

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion