Abstract
Zinc finger proteins were involved in response to different environmental stresses in plant species. A typical Cys2/His2-type (C2H2-type) zinc finger gene GmZF1 from soybean was isolated and was composed of 172 amino acids containing two conserved C2H2-type zinc finger domains. Phylogenetic analysis showed that GmZF1 was clustered on the same branch with six C2H2-type ZFPs from dicotyledonous plants excepting for GsZFP1, and distinguished those from monocotyledon species. The GmZF1 protein was localized at the nucleus, and has specific binding activity with EP1S core sequence, and nucleotide mutation in the core sequence of EPSPS promoter changed the binding ability between GmZF1 protein and core DNA element, implying that two amino acid residues, G and C boxed in core sequence TGACAGTGTCA possibly play positive regulation role in recognizing DNA-binding sites in GmZF1 proteins. High accumulation of GmZF1 mRNA induced by exogenous ABA suggested that GmZF1 was involved in an ABA-dependent signal transduction pathway. Over-expression of GmZF1 significantly improved the contents of proline and soluble sugar and decreased the MDA contents in the transgenic lines exposed to cold stress, indicating that transgenic Arabidopsis carrying GmZF1 gene have adaptive mechanisms to cold stress. Over-expression of GmZF1 also increased the expression of cold-regulated cor6.6 gene by probably recognizing protein-DNA binding sites, suggesting that GmZF1 from soybean could enhance the tolerance of Arabidopsis to cold stress by regulating expression of cold-regulation gene in the transgenic Arabidopsis.
Highlights
Plants are usually exposed to various environmental stress factors affecting plant growth and crop productivity, such as drought, high salt and low temperature
A homology search against the GenBank database showed that GmZF1 is a homolog of C2H2-type zinc finger proteins (ZFPs), and has two typical C2/ H2 type zinc finger domains (CX2CX3FX3QALGGHX3H) (Fig. 1a)
GmZF1 has 57%, 48%, 47% and 46% homology with the C2H2-type ZFPs from Medicago truncatula, Petunia, Arabidopsis and rice, respectively, and no highly homology was observed between these genes from different plants, suggesting that GmZF1 belongs to a novel subfamily member of C2H2 zinc finger
Summary
Plants are usually exposed to various environmental stress factors affecting plant growth and crop productivity, such as drought, high salt and low temperature. The C2H2-type zinc finger has been well characterized in the eukaryotic transcription factors having specific CX2-4CX3 FX5LX2HX3-5H structure (X: any amino acid; number: amino acid amounts), and this conserved motif contains two pairs of specific Cys and His residues which form a tetrahedral structure with a zinc ion [7]. In vitro analysis revealed that the conserved QALGGH motif in plants plays a critical role in DNA binding activity, and each amino acid residue in the motif seems to be essential for maintaining effective binding between DNA and C2H2-type zinc finger proteins [10,11], and these specific domains conferred that zinc-finger proteins play important regulatory role by recognizing the target sequences and regulating expression of target gene in a plant-specific manner [1,8,12]
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