Overexpression of the tonoplast aquaporin AtTIP5; 1 conferred tolerance to boron toxicity in Arabidopsis

• Published in: Journal of genetics and genomics Vol. 37; no. 6; pp. 389 - 397
• Main Authors: Pang, Yongqi, Li, Lijuan, Ren, Fei, Lu, Pingli, Wei, Pengcheng, Cai, Jinghui, Xin, Lingguo, Zhang, Juan, Chen, Jia, Wang, Xuechen
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: Chinese; English
• Published: China Elsevier Ltd 01.06.2010
• Subjects: aquaporin; Aquaporins; Aquaporins - genetics; Aquaporins - metabolism; Arabidopsis; Arabidopsis - cytology; Arabidopsis - drug effects; Arabidopsis - genetics; Arabidopsis - physiology; Arabidopsis Proteins - genetics; Arabidopsis Proteins - metabolism; boron; Boron - metabolism; Boron - toxicity; Gene Expression; Intracellular Membranes - drug effects; Intracellular Membranes - metabolism; Intracellular Space - drug effects; Intracellular Space - metabolism; Plants, Genetically Modified; Protein Transport; toxicity tolerance; Vacuoles - drug effects; Vacuoles - metabolism; 亚细胞定位; 作物产量; 拟南芥; 植物毒性; 水通道蛋白; 液泡膜; 生物信息学; 硼含量; aquaporin; boron; toxicity tolerance
• ISSN: 1673-8527
• DOI: 10.1016/S1673-8527(09)60057-6

Boron （B） toxicity to plants is responsible for low crop productivity in many regions of the world. Here we report a novel and effective means to alleviate the B toxicity to plants under high B circumstance. Functional characterization of AtTIP5;1, an aquaporin gene, re- vealed that overexpression ofAtTIP5;1 （OxAtT1P5;1） in Arabidopsis significantly increased its tolerance to high B toxicity. Compared to wild-type plants, OxAtTIP5;1 plants exhibited longer hypocotyls, accelerated development, increased silique production under high B treatments. GUS staining and quantitative RT-PCR （qRT-PCR） results demonstrated that the expression of AtTIP5;1 was induced by high B concentration treatment. Subcellular localization analysis revealed that the AtTIP5;1-GFP fusion protein was localized on the tonoplast membrane, which was consistent with the prediction based on bioinformatics. Taken together, our results suggest that AtTIP5; 1 is in- volved in B transport pathway possibly via vacuolar compartmentation for B, and that overexpression of AtTIP5;1 in plants may provide an effective way to overcome the problem resulting from high B concentration toxicity.