Abstract
MYB transcription factors have been demonstrated to play key regulatory roles in plant growth, development and abiotic stress response. However, knowledge concerning the involvement of rice MYB genes in salinity and drought stress resistance are largely unknown. In the present study, we cloned and characterized the OsMYB6 gene, which was induced by drought and salinity stress. Subcellular localization of OsMYB6-YFP fusion protein in protoplast cells indicated that OsMYB6 was localized in the nucleus. Overexpression of OsMYB6 in rice did not suggest a negative effect on the growth and development of transgenic plants, but OsMYB6-overexpressing plants showed increased tolerance to drought and salt stress compared with wild-type plants, as are evaluated by higher proline content, higher CAT and SOD activities, lower REL and MDA content in transgenic plants under drought and salt stress conditions. In addition, the expression of abiotic stress-responsive genes were significantly higher in OsMYB6 transgenic plants than that in wild-type plants under drought and salt stress conditions. These results indicate that OsMYB6 gene functions as a stress-responsive transcription factor which plays a positive regulatory role in response to drought and salt stress resistance, and may be used as a candidate gene for molecular breeding of salt-tolerant and drought-tolerant crop varieties.
Highlights
High salinity and drought are two major stress factors that can seriously affect plant growth, development, and crop yield
Amino acid sequence alignment analysis indicated that OsMYB6 was an R2R3-MYB protein that had two imperfect repeats in its MYB domain (Figure 1)
Our finding suggested that overexpression of OsMYB6 in rice increased transgenic plants tolerance to drought and salinity stress, and transgenic plants possessed less pronounced leaf rolling and aging compared to wild-type plants (Figures 5A, 6A)
Summary
High salinity and drought are two major stress factors that can seriously affect plant growth, development, and crop yield. When plants are exposed to drought and salinity stress, a series of genes are activated or inhibited, and the products of these genes may either further control the expression of downstream genes or directly protect plants from stress damage (Dai et al, 2007). Among these genes, transcription factors, such as AP2/ERF, MYB, NAC, WRKY, bZIP, and bHLH, have been. MYB proteins contain one, two or three imperfect repeats containing 52 amino acid residues in their MYB domain (Stracke et al, 2001; Butt et al, 2017). Based on the number of repeats in their MYB domain, the members from MYB family are divided into four groups, R2R3-MYB, MYB1-R, 4R-MYB, and R1R2R3-MYB in Arabidopsis (Stracke et al, 2001)
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