Abstract
Drought transcriptome analysis of finger millet (Eleusine coracana) by cDNA subtraction identified drought responsive genes that have a potential role in drought tolerance. Through virus-induced gene silencing (VIGS) in a related crop species, maize (Zea mays), several genes, including a G-BOX BINDING FACTOR 3 (GBF3) were identified as candidate drought stress response genes and the role of GBF3 in drought tolerance was studied in Arabidopsis thaliana. Overexpression of both EcGBF3 and AtGBF3 in A. thaliana resulted in improved tolerance to osmotic stress, salinity and drought stress in addition to conferring insensitivity to ABA. Conversely, loss of function of this gene increased the sensitivity of A. thaliana plants to drought stress. EcGBF3 transgenic A. thaliana results also suggest that drought tolerance of sensitive plants can be improved by transferring genes from far related crops like finger millet. Our results demonstrate the role of GBF3 in imparting drought tolerance in A. thaliana and indicate the conserved role of this gene in drought and other abiotic stress tolerance in several plant species.
Highlights
Drought stress is one of the most prevalent environmental factors limiting crop productivity[1]
RNA pooled from 80% field capacity (FC), 60% FC and 35% FC was used as drought sample and 100% FC as control
The maximum induction of expressed sequence tags (ESTs) was observed under severe drought stress of 35% FC with 47 ESTs showing more than 2-fold increase in transcript levels compared to control
Summary
Drought stress is one of the most prevalent environmental factors limiting crop productivity[1]. Crop plants are subjected to short-term water deficits of several days to weeks and some plant species have evolved to quickly limit the cellular damage and continue to grow in the stressful environment Crop plants such as pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum), horsegram (Macrotyloma uniflorum), peanut (Arachis hypogaea), pigeon pea (Cajanus cajan) and sorghum (Sorghum bicolor) have been used to identify traits and genes that contribute for yield protection under drought[4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11]. Plant adaptation to drought stress has been shown to be orchestrated by regulated expression of several stress responsive genes[15] The products of these genes are directly involved in cellular protection from stress-damage (e.g. osmoprotectants, antioxidants and chaperons), signal transduction and transcriptional control[15,16,17,18]. Results from three plant species studied here indicated that GBF3, a transcription factor that potentially regulates genes encoding ABI five binding proteins, play a role in imparting drought tolerance
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