Overexpression of VaPAT1, a GRAS transcription factor from Vitis amurensis, confers abiotic stress tolerance in Arabidopsis

• Published in: Plant cell reports Vol. 35; no. 3; pp. 655 - 666
• Main Authors: Yuan, Yangyang, Fang, Linchuan, Karungo, Sospeter Karanja, Zhang, Langlang, Gao, Yingying, Li, Shaohua, Xin, Haiping
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin/Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 01.03.2016; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: abiotic stress; abscisic acid; Abscisic Acid - pharmacology; Adaptation, Physiological - genetics; Amino Acid Sequence; Arabidopsis; Arabidopsis - genetics; Biomedical and Life Sciences; Biotechnology; Cell Biology; cold; cold treatment; Drought; Droughts; Gene Expression Regulation, Plant - drug effects; Gene Expression Regulation, Plant - genetics; gene overexpression; genes; gibberellic acid; Gibberellins - pharmacology; GRAS substances; Growth conditions; Life Sciences; Original Article; Phylogeny; Plant Biochemistry; Plant growth; Plant Growth Regulators - pharmacology; Plant Proteins - classification; Plant Proteins - genetics; Plant Sciences; Plants, Genetically Modified; proline; Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction; salinity; Salinity tolerance; Salt tolerance; Salt-Tolerance - genetics; Seedlings; sequence alignment; Sequence Homology, Amino Acid; Sodium Chloride - pharmacology; stress response; stress tolerance; sugars; transcription factors; Transcription Factors - classification; Transcription Factors - genetics; transgenic plants; Vitis - genetics; Vitis amurensis; Stress-related genes; Gibberellic acid (GA); GRAS transcription factor; Abiotic stress; Vitis amurensis; VaPAT1
• ISSN: 0721-7714; 1432-203X
• DOI: 10.1007/s00299-015-1910-x

KEY MESSAGE : VaPAT1 functions as a stress-inducible GRAS gene and enhanced cold, drought and salt tolerance in transgenic Arabidopsis via modulation of the expression of a series of stress-related genes. The plant-specific GRAS transcription factor family regulates diverse processes involved in plant growth, development and stress responses. In this study, VaPAT1, a GRAS gene from Vitis amurensis was isolated and functionally characterized. Sequence alignment and phylogenetic analysis showed that VaPAT1 has a high sequence identity to CmsGRAS and OsCIGR1, which belong to PAT1 branch of GRAS family and function in stress resistance. The transcription of VaPAT1 was markedly induced by stress-related phytohormone abscisic acid (ABA) and various abiotic stress treatments such as cold, drought and high salinity, however, it was repressed by exogenous gibberellic acid (GA) application. Overexpression of VaPAT1 increased the cold, drought and high salinity tolerance in transgenic Arabidopsis. When compared with wild type (WT) seedlings, the VaPAT1-overexpression lines accumulated higher levels of proline and soluble sugar under these stress treatments. Moreover, stress-related genes such as AtSIZ1, AtCBF1, AtATR1/MYB34, AtMYC2, AtCOR15A, AtRD29A and AtRD29B showed higher expression levels in VaPAT1 transgenic lines than in WT Arabidopsis under normal growth conditions. Together, our results indicated that VaPAT1 functions as a positive transcriptional regulator involved in grapevine abiotic stress responses.