Abstract
The resurrection plants Myrothamnus flabellifolia can survive long term severe drought and desiccation conditions and soon recover after rewatering. However, few genes related to such excellent drought tolerance and underlying molecular mechanism have been excavated. WRKY transcription factors play critical roles in biotic and abiotic stress signaling, in which WRKY70 functions as a positive regulator in biotic stress response but a negative regulator in abiotic stress signaling in Arabidopsis and some other plant species. In the present study, the functions of a dehydration-induced MfWRKY70 of M. flabellifolia participating was investigated in the model plant Arabidopsis. Our results indicated that MfWRKY70 was localized in the nucleus and could significantly increase tolerance to drought, osmotic, and salinity stresses by promoting root growth and water retention, as well as enhancing the antioxidant enzyme system and maintaining reactive oxygen species (ROS) homeostasis and membrane-lipid stability under stressful conditions. Moreover, the expression of stress-associated genes (P5CS, NCED3 and RD29A) was positively regulated in the overexpression of MfWRKY70 Arabidopsis. We proposed that MfWRKY70 may function as a positive regulator for abiotic stress responses and can be considered as a potential gene for improvement of drought and salinity tolerance in plants.
Highlights
Plants in nature were exposed to changing environmental conditions and subjected to a variety of biotic and abiotic stresses
The full length of coding region of MfWRKY70 cDNA was cloned from M. flabellifolia by PCR amplification
As revealed by multiple sequence alignment, MfWRKY70 was most homologous to PlWRKY70 of Paeonia lactiflora and AcWRKY70 of Actinidia chinensis (Figure 1b)
Summary
Plants in nature were exposed to changing environmental conditions and subjected to a variety of biotic and abiotic stresses. To increase their probability of survival, plants have to adapt to these hostile environments through evolutionary and regulatory mechanisms [1,2]. As the major abiotic stresses, drought and high salinity detrimentally impact the growth, development, and productivity of plants, even causing serious loss of agricultural yield [3,4]. WRKY transcription factors (WRKYs), as a large family of plant transcription factors (TF), participate in a variety of biological processes in plants, including root growth, the quality of blossom clusters, senescence of leaf, fruit maturation, and resistance to Biomolecules 2021, 11, 327.
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