Abstract
Cytoskeleton plays a vital role in stress tolerance; however, involvement of intermediate filaments (IFs) in such a response remains elusive in crop plants. This study provides clear evidence about the unique involvement of IFs in cellular protection against abiotic stress in rice. Transcript abundance of Oryza sativa intermediate filament (OsIF) encoding gene showed 2–10 fold up-regulation under different abiotic stress. Overexpression of OsIF in transgenic rice enhanced tolerance to salinity and heat stress, while its knock-down (KD) rendered plants more sensitive thereby indicating the role of IFs in promoting survival under stress. Seeds of OsIF overexpression rice germinated normally in the presence of high salt, showed better growth, maintained chloroplast ultrastructure and favourable K+/Na+ ratio than the wild type (WT) and KD plants. Analysis of photosynthesis and chlorophyll a fluorescence data suggested better performance of both photosystem I and II in the OsIF overexpression rice under salinity stress as compared to the WT and KD. Under salinity and high temperature stress, OsIF overexpressing plants could maintain significantly high yield, while the WT and KD plants could not. Further, metabolite profiling revealed a 2–4 fold higher accumulation of proline and trehalose in OsIF overexpressing rice than WT, under salinity stress.
Highlights
Cytoskeleton plays a vital role in stress tolerance; involvement of intermediate filaments (IFs) in such a response remains elusive in crop plants
Worldwide, are involved in the understanding of the complex mechanism of abiotic stress tolerance in plants, it has been very difficult to pin down a single candidate gene or mechanism for improving the survival of plants, as well as their yield under stress
This may be due to the fact that abiotic stress tolerance is a quantitative trait, which is regulated by a combination of several environmental factors
Summary
Cytoskeleton plays a vital role in stress tolerance; involvement of intermediate filaments (IFs) in such a response remains elusive in crop plants. Our research group has reported[5] differential expression of Saltol QTL related intermediate filaments (IFs) encoding gene, OsIF, in salt-tolerant Pokkali and salt-sensitive IR64 rice. Our results, presented in this paper, clearly demonstrate that overexpression of the OsIF gene improves growth of rice transgenic plants under abiotic stress by stabilizing its photosynthesis, which is partly due to unchanged ultrastructure of chloroplasts, which in turn, increases survival and yield of plants. This improved salinity stress tolerance of overexpressed lines is linked with increased levels of compatible osmolytes such as proline and trehalose in these plants
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