Abstract
Drought is a major threat to global soybean production. The limited transformation potential and polyploid nature of soybean have hindered functional analysis of soybean genes. Previous research has implicated farnesylation in the plant's response to abscisic acid (ABA) and drought tolerance. We therefore used virus-induced gene silencing (VIGS) to evaluate farnesyltransferase genes, GmERA1A and GmERA1B (Glycine max Enhanced Response to ABA1-A and -B), as potential targets for increasing drought resistance in soybean. Apple latent spherical virus (ALSV)-mediated GmERA1-down-regulated soybean leaves displayed an enhanced stomatal response to ABA and reduced water loss and wilting under dehydration conditions, suggesting that GmERA1A and GmERA1B negatively regulate ABA signaling in soybean guard cells. The findings provide evidence that the ALSV-VIGS system, which bypasses the need to generate transgenic plants, is a useful tool for analyzing gene function using only a single down-regulated leaf. Thus, the ALSV-VIGS system could constitute part of a next-generation molecular breeding pipeline to accelerate drought resistance breeding in soybean.
MeSH terms
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Abscisic Acid / pharmacology*
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Adaptation, Physiological / genetics
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Amino Acid Sequence
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Base Sequence
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Down-Regulation / drug effects
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Droughts*
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Farnesyltranstransferase / genetics
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Gene Expression Regulation, Developmental / drug effects
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Gene Expression Regulation, Enzymologic / drug effects
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Gene Expression Regulation, Plant / drug effects
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Gene Silencing
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Glycine max / enzymology
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Glycine max / genetics*
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Glycine max / growth & development
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Isoenzymes / genetics
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Malus / virology
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Plant Growth Regulators / pharmacology
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Plant Leaves / enzymology
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Plant Leaves / genetics
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Plant Leaves / growth & development
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Plant Proteins / genetics*
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Plant Stomata / drug effects*
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Plant Stomata / genetics
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Plant Stomata / physiology
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Plant Viruses / genetics
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Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction
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Sequence Homology, Amino Acid
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Sequence Homology, Nucleic Acid
Substances
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Isoenzymes
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Plant Growth Regulators
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Plant Proteins
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Abscisic Acid
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Farnesyltranstransferase
Grants and funding
This work was supported in part by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) of Japan Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C) (No. 24510312 and 16K07412 to YF) and the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) of Japan (to YF).