Abstract
BackgroundDrought stress is an environmental factor that limits plant growth and reproduction. Little research has been conducted to investigate the MLP gene in tobacco. Here, NtMLP423 was isolated and identified, and its role in drought stress was studied.ResultsOverexpression of NtMLP423 improved tolerance to drought stress in tobacco, as determined by physiological analyses of water loss efficiency, reactive oxygen species levels, malondialdehyde content, and levels of osmotic regulatory substances. Overexpression of NtMLP423 in transgenic plants led to greater sensitivity to abscisic acid (ABA)-mediated seed germination and ABA-induced stomatal closure. NtMLP423 also regulated drought tolerance by increasing the levels of ABA under conditions of drought stress. Our study showed that the transcription level of ABA synthetic genes also increased. Overexpression of NtMLP423 reduced membrane damage and ROS accumulation and increased the expression of stress-related genes under drought stress. We also found that NtWRKY71 regulated the transcription of NtMLP423 to improve drought tolerance.ConclusionsOur results indicated that NtMLP423-overexpressing increased drought tolerance in tobacco via the ABA pathway.
Highlights
Drought stress is an environmental factor that limits plant growth and reproduction
Overexpression of NtMLP423 confers drought tolerance in Arabidopsis To investigate whether NtMLP423 is participated in drought stress, we obtained transgenic Arabidopsis expressing the NtMLP423 gene
The results suggested that there was no difference in germination rate in murashige and skoog (MS) medium; germination rate of overexpressing NtMLP423 Arabidopsis were higher than that of wild type (WT) seeds in different concentrations of the mannitol medium (Fig. S4A, B)
Summary
Drought stress is an environmental factor that limits plant growth and reproduction. Drought stress is not conducive to plant growth and development, as it can cause changes in plant morphology and damage to cells [1, 2]. Abscisic acid is a key sesquiterpene which is participated in many important processes of plant growth and development, and controls many genes related to stress adaptation responses and osmotic adjustment [4,5,6]. Due to the role of ABA in response to drought stress, genes involved in the biosynthesis of ABA have been identified, such as 9-cis-epoxycarotenoid dioxygenase (NCED), xanthoxin dehydrogenase/reductase (ABA2), and ABA-aldehyde oxidase 3 (AAO3) [8, 9]. In Arabidopsis, NCED3 contributes to ABA accumulation in response to drought stress [10], while the aba and
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