Cloning and Functional Analysis of wzy2-1 Gene in Wheat

Abstract

Dehydrins (DHNs) are identified as the group II of LEA proteins and involved in plant abiotic stress tolerance. In this study, we isolated a novel Kn-type dehydrin gene from wheat cultivar Zhengyin 1, which was designated wzy2-1. The full length of wzy2-1 is 1740 bp, encoding 579 amino acids and containing nine conserved K-fragments. Sequence alignment indicated that wzy2-1 had high homology to Dhn5 gene in Hordeum vulgare. The WZY2-1 protein was predicted to be a highly-hydrophilic and disordered protein. The WZY2-1 protein was successfully expressed in E. coli strain BL21 (DE3). We found that WZY2-1 protein improved the tolerance to low or high temperature, salt and osmotic stresses in E. coli. The qRT-PCR assay indicated that the ex- pression of wzy2-1 gene was induced by low temperature, PEG, and salt stresses rather than ABA. Thus, we conclude that wzy2-1 is an ABA-independent gene.