Abstract
Jasmonic acid (JA) is a plant hormone that plays an important role in the defense response and stable growth of rice. In this study, we investigated the role of the JA-responsive valine-glutamine (VQ)-motif-containing protein OsVQ13 in JA signaling in rice. OsVQ13 was primarily located in the nucleus and cytoplasm. The transgenic rice plants overexpressing OsVQ13 exhibited a JA-hypersensitive phenotype and increased JA-induced resistance to Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae (Xoo), which is the bacteria that causes rice bacterial blight, one of the most serious diseases in rice. Furthermore, we identified a mitogen-activated protein kinase, OsMPK6, as an OsVQ13-associating protein. The expression of genes regulated by OsWRKY45, an important WRKY-type transcription factor for Xoo resistance that is known to be regulated by OsMPK6, was upregulated in OsVQ13-overexpressing rice plants. The grain size of OsVQ13-overexpressing rice plants was also larger than that of the wild type. These results indicated that OsVQ13 positively regulated JA signaling by activating the OsMPK6–OsWRKY45 signaling pathway in rice.
Highlights
Rice (Oryza sativa L.) is a major crop in the world, and decreased crop yields caused by pathogen attacks is a serious problem in rice farming
We previously demonstrated that the gene expression patterns in response to jasmonic acid (JA) are broadly divided into two phases, the early (12 h) phases, under our experimental conditions [13]
When OsVQ13 was overexpressed in rice in the current study, the transgenic plants exhibited a JA-hypersensitive phenotype and increased basal and JA-induced resistances against Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae (Xoo)
Summary
Rice (Oryza sativa L.) is a major crop in the world, and decreased crop yields caused by pathogen attacks is a serious problem in rice farming. Two plant hormones, jasmonic acid (JA) and salicylic acid (SA), are important signaling compounds that help to regulate the expression of defense-related genes in rice [1]. Treatment with benzothiadiazole (BTH), an SA analog, upregulates many pathogenesis-related (PR) genes and defense-related transcription factors (TFs) in rice and enhances resistance to rice bacterial blight and rice blast caused by Xanthomonas oryzae pv. As one of the WRKY-type TFs, OsWRKY45 plays a crucial role in the BTH-mediated defense response against Xoo and P. oryzae [2,4]. OsNPR1, a rice homologue to Arabidopsis NON-EXPRESSOR OF PATHOGENESIS-RELATED GENES1 (AtNPR1) [5], acts as a positive regulator of SA signaling and is involved in SA-mediated defense response in rice [6,7,8]
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