Abstract
NAC transcription factors play diverse roles in plant development and responses to abiotic stresses. However, the biological roles of NAC family members in wheat are not well understood. Here, we reported the isolation and functional characterization of a novel wheat TaNAC47 gene. TaNAC47 encoded protein, localizing in the nucleus, is able to bind to the ABRE cis-element and transactivate transcription in yeast, suggesting that it likely functions as a transcriptional activator. We also showed that TaNAC47 is differentially expressed in different tissues, and its expression was induced by the stress treatments of salt, cold, polyethylene glycol and exogenous abscisic acid. Furthermore, overexpression of TaNAC47 in Arabidopsis resulted in ABA hypersensitivity and enhancing tolerance of transgenic plants to drought, salt, and freezing stresses. Strikingly, overexpression of TaNAC47 was found to activate the expression of downstream genes and change several physiological indices that may enable transgenic plants to overcome unfavorable environments. Taken together, these results uncovered an important role of wheat TaNAC47 gene in response to ABA and abiotic stresses.
Highlights
Abiotic stress is one of the main factors influencing growth, development and yield of plants worldwide
Results from blast analysis revealed that TaNAC47 shared 87.6% identity to another wheat abiotic stressed responsive NAC protein TaNAC67
TaNAC47 expression levels were increased in response to NaCl treatment within 12 h, the transcript level returned to background level afterwards (Figure 1D). These results indicated that gene expression for TaNAC47 was significantly induced by all four abiotic stress treatments, and that TaNAC47 was sensitive to cold, ABA and polyethylene glycol (PEG) stresses at an early stage of the treatments
Summary
Abiotic stress is one of the main factors influencing growth, development and yield of plants worldwide. Progress has been made in identifying beneficial stress-related genes that can enhance the tolerance of plants to abiotic stresses (Tran et al, 2010; Nakashima et al, 2012). Transcription factors (TFs) are pivotal regulators involving in the response to abiotic stress, and overexpression of TF genes commonly improved a plant’s tolerance to abiotic stress. The NAC protein forms one of the largest families of plant-specific TFs (Olsen et al, 2005). They were derived from three genes containing particular domains of NAM (no apical meristem), ATAF (Arabidopsis transcription activation factor) and CUC (cup-shaped cotyledon) (Souer et al, 1996; Aida et al, 1997).
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