Abstract
BackgroundLTR retrotransposons play a significant role in plant growth, genome evolution, and environmental stress response, but their regulatory response to heat stress remains unclear. We have investigated the activities of two LTR retrotransposons, PHRE1 and PHRE2, of moso bamboo (Phyllostachys edulis) in response to heat stress.ResultsThe differential overexpression of PHRE1 and PHRE2 with or without CaMV35s promoter showed enhanced expression under heat stress in transgenic plants. The transcriptional activity studies showed an increase in transposition activity and copy number among moso bamboo wild type and Arabidopsis transgenic plants under heat stress. Comparison of promoter activity in transgenic plants indicated that 5’LTR promoter activity was higher than CaMV35s promoter. Additionally, yeast one-hybrid (Y1H) system and in planta biomolecular fluorescence complementation (BiFC) assay revealed interactions of heat-dependent transcription factors (TFs) with 5’LTR sequence and direct interactions of TFs with pol and gag.ConclusionsOur results conclude that the 5’LTR acts as a promoter and could regulate the LTR retrotransposons in moso bamboo under heat stress.
Highlights
LTR retrotransposons play a significant role in plant growth, genome evolution, and environmental stress response, but their regulatory response to heat stress remains unclear
Structure analysis of PHRE1 and PHRE2 PHRE1 and PHRE2 were selected based on the complete structure and homology of domains, complete with two full-length gag and pol genes with continuous open reading frame (ORF) without nonsense and frameshift mutations (Table S1)
The 5’LTR of PHRE1 contained core promoter features such as four CAAT boxes located at 39, 142, 144, and 291 bp positions and TATA box located at 49 bp positions
Summary
LTR retrotransposons play a significant role in plant growth, genome evolution, and environmental stress response, but their regulatory response to heat stress remains unclear. Present in plant genomes, long terminal repeat (LTR) retrotransposons, class I transposable elements (TE), are characterized by a pair of identical repeats several hundred base pairs long on both the terminals. They belong to two major superfamilies, Ty1/Copia, and Ty3/Gypsy with pan-genome distribution and constitute a major portion of genomes [1, 2]. The specific expression of the retroelements, Tnt and Tto situated within the U3 region of 5’LTR fused by the GUS reporter gene have revealed transcriptional activity under the stress conditions [9,10,11]. ONSEN, an element of Ty1/Copia superfamily, in Arabidopsis progeny lines was found to be most effective under heat stress [19]
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