One Heat Shock Transcription Factor Confers High Thermal Tolerance in Clematis Plants.

Long Zhang,Shucheng Feng,Siyuan Peng,Yi Zhang,Feng Ming,Changhua Jiang,Chanjuan Mao,Rui Wang

doi:10.3390/ijms22062900

Abstract

Clematis plants play an important role in botanical gardens. Heat stress can destroy the activity, state and conformation of plant proteins, and its regulatory pathway has been well characterized in Arabidopsis and some crop plants. However, the heat resistance response mechanism in horticultural plants including Clematis has rarely been reported. Here, we identified a heat-tolerant clematis species, Clematis vitalba. The relative water loss and electrolytic leakage were significantly lower under heat treatment in Clematis vitalba compared to Stolwijk Gold. Differential expression heat-tolerant genes (HTGs) were identified based on nonparametric transcriptome analysis. For validation, one heat shock transcription factor, CvHSF30-2, extremely induced by heat stimuli in Clematis vitalba, was identified to confer tolerance to heat stress in Escherichia coli and Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Furthermore, silencing of HSF30-2 by virus-induced gene silencing (VIGS) led to heat sensitivity in tobacco and Clematis, suggesting that the candidate heat-resistant genes identified in this RNA-seq analysis are credible and offer significant utility. We also found that CvHSF30-2 improved heat tolerance of Clematis vitalba by elevating heat shock protein (HSP) expression, which was negatively regulated by CvHSFB2a. Taken together, this study provides insights into the mechanism of Clematis heat tolerance and the findings can be potentially applied in horticultural plants to improve economic efficiency through genetic approaches.

Highlights

IntroductionPublisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations
We found that CvHSF30-2 improved the heat tolerance of Clematis vitalba by elevating heat shock protein (HSP) expression, which was negatively regulated by
Due to its disseminatory reproductive system, vitality and climbing behavior, Clematis vitalba is an invasive plant in many places, such as New Zealand

Summary

Introduction

Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Known as the clematis peony, is a genus of about 355 species of buttercup, mainly distributed in the temperate regions north of the Earth’s equator, which are typical woody vines. Clematis plants play an important role in botanical gardens due to their unique flowers, rich colors and wire-like stems and are praised as the “Queen of Vines” [1]. Clematis can be seen in most botanical gardens, parks and family gardens. Clematis is a plant source of many medicinal active ingredients and its specialized metabolites can be used as medicine to disperse wind damp, unclog channels and ease pain [2]

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