Abstract
Background Hemarthria compressa is a stoloniferous perennial tropical forage grass with a wide geographic distribution; however, environmental stress has a great influence on its growth. The DREB transcription factor family genes contains candidate genes for improving plant stress tolerance.ResultsFrom cold-treated H. compressa plants, a putative DREB2 gene (HcDREB2) was cloned using the RACE-PCR method. HcDREB2 was 1296 bp in length and encoded a putative protein 264 amino acid residues long. HcDREB2 shared the highest sequence identity with DREB2 in sorghum. The expression of HcDREB2 was independent of ABA treatment, but inducible by low temperatures as well as drought and high salinity treatments. Yeast one-hybrid assays showed that HcDREB2 directly bound the DRE cis-acting element to transactivate the expression of the downstream reporter genes.ConclusionsHcDREB2, a stress-inducible but ABA-independent transcription factor gene, can transactivate downstream genes by binding to the DRE cis-element. The current results are a foundation for making use of this stress tolerance gene in future H. compressa studies.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s41065-016-0008-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Highlights
Hemarthria compressa is a stoloniferous perennial tropical forage grass with a wide geographic distribution; environmental stress has a great influence on its growth
The full sequence of HcDREB shared only moderate identity with known DREB proteins in other plant species, it contained a conserved AP2/EREBP domain, including two highly conserved residues (V14 and E19) that are critical to its interaction with the DRE ciselement
We showed that HcDREB2 in H. compressa was induced by low temperatures and drought, but not by ABA, which implies that HcDREB2 might play an important role in the stress response of H. compressa and that HcDREB2-mediated stress tolerance might be ABA-independent
Summary
Hemarthria compressa is a stoloniferous perennial tropical forage grass with a wide geographic distribution; environmental stress has a great influence on its growth. Hemarthria compressa, commonly called whip grass, is a perennial grass in the family Gramineae. It is mainly distributed in tropical and subtropical zones, with a sparse distribution in the temperate-humid zones of the Northern Hemisphere. H. compressa is characterized by its long growing period, high growth rate, strong regenerative capacity, high yield, and strong stress tolerance. In southern China, H. compressa is an important forage grass, and is often used for soil and water conservation as well as ecological management [1, 2]. Genetic information about H. compressa is very rare, and no sequence records of this important forage grass have been available in the NCBI
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