Abstract
Drought and salt stress are major abiotic stress that inhibit plants growth and development, here we report a plasma membrane intrinsic protein ZmPIP1;1 from maize and identified its function in drought and salt tolerance in Arabidopsis. ZmPIP1;1 was localized to the plasma membrane and endoplasmic reticulum in maize protoplasts. Treatment with PEG or NaCl resulted in induced expression of ZmPIP1;1 in root and leaves. Constitutive overexpression of ZmPIP1;1 in transgenic Arabidopsis plants resulted in enhanced drought and salt stress tolerance compared to wild type. A number of stress responsive genes involved in cellular osmoprotection in ZmPIP1;1 overexpression plants were up-regulated under drought or salt condition. ZmPIP1;1 overexpression plants showed higher activities of reactive oxygen species (ROS) scavenging enzymes such as catalase and superoxide dismutase, lower contents of stress-induced ROS such as superoxide, hydrogen peroxide and malondialdehyde, and higher levels of proline under drought and salt stress than did wild type. ZmPIP1;1 may play a role in drought and salt stress tolerance by inducing of stress responsive genes and increasing of ROS scavenging enzymes activities, and could provide a valuable gene for further plant breeding.
Highlights
Plants live in constantly changing environments that are often stressful for growth and development
A phylogenetic tree was constructed based on the amino acid sequence alignment of ZmPIPs and other plant species AQPs sequences obtained from GenBank (S1 Fig)
31 AQP proteins have been identified in maize genome [13], little is known about the function of AQPs
Summary
Plants live in constantly changing environments that are often stressful for growth and development. These adverse environmental conditions include biotic stress and abiotic stress. The adaptive responses of plants to the stress can be conceptually grouped into three aspects: osmotic adjustment or ion homeostasis caused by drought and salt; stress damage control and repair, detoxification; and growth control [2]. Besides osmotic stress caused by drought and salt, oxidative damage is another stress resulting from imbalance between reactive oxygen species (ROS) production and scavenging [3]. The ROS scavenging mechanisms have been proven in the response of plants to water deficit and salinity functioning as toxic byproducts of stress metabolism, as well as important signal transduction molecules [4]
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