CmWRKY1 Enhances the Dehydration Tolerance of Chrysanthemum through the Regulation of ABA-Associated Genes

Qingqing Fan; Aiping Song; Jiafu Jiang; Ting Zhang; Hainan Sun; Yinjie Wang; Sumei Chen; Fadi Chen

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0150572

CmWRKY1 Enhances the Dehydration Tolerance of Chrysanthemum through the Regulation of ABA-Associated Genes

PLoS One. 2016 Mar 3;11(3):e0150572. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0150572. eCollection 2016.

Authors

Qingqing Fan^{1

2}, Aiping Song¹, Jiafu Jiang¹, Ting Zhang¹, Hainan Sun¹, Yinjie Wang¹, Sumei Chen¹, Fadi Chen^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ College of Horticulture, Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing, 210095, China.
² Jiangsu Province Engineering Lab for Modern Facility Agriculture Technology & Equipment, Nanjing, 210095, China.

Abstract

WRKY transcription factors serve as antagonistic or synergistic regulators in a variety of abiotic stress responses in plants. Here, we show that CmWRKY1, a member of the group IIb WRKY family isolated from Chrysanthemum morifolium, exhibits no transcriptional activation in yeast cells. The subcellular localization examination showed that CmWRKY1 localizes to the nucleus in vivo. Furthermore, CmWRKY1-overexpressing transgenic lines exhibit enhanced dehydration tolerance in response to polyethylene glycol (PEG) treatment compared with wild-type plants. We further confirmed that the transgenic plants exhibit suppressed expression levels of genes negatively regulated by ABA, such as PP2C, ABI1 and ABI2, and activated expression levels of genes positively regulated by ABA, such as PYL2, SnRK2.2, ABF4, MYB2, RAB18, and DREB1A. Taken together, our results indicate that CmWRKY1 plays an important role in the response to drought in chrysanthemum through an ABA-mediated pathway.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Abscisic Acid / genetics*
Abscisic Acid / metabolism
Arabidopsis / genetics
Arabidopsis Proteins / biosynthesis
Arabidopsis Proteins / genetics*
Chrysanthemum / genetics*
Chrysanthemum / growth & development
DNA-Binding Proteins / biosynthesis
DNA-Binding Proteins / genetics*
Dehydration / genetics*
Gene Expression Regulation, Plant
Plants, Genetically Modified
Sequence Alignment
Transcription Factors / biosynthesis
Transcription Factors / genetics*
Transcriptional Activation / genetics*

Substances

Arabidopsis Proteins
DNA-Binding Proteins
Transcription Factors
ZAP1 protein, Arabidopsis
Abscisic Acid

Grants and funding

This study was funded by the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars (31425022), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31501792, 31471913), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (KYTZ201401, KJQN201658), the Natural Science Fund of Jiangsu Province (BK20150657), 333 high-level personnel training project of Jiangsu Province (BRA2015315), and the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2014M561673, 2015T80564).