Co-overexpression of two Heat Shock Factors results in enhanced seed longevity and in synergistic effects on seedling tolerance to severe dehydration and oxidative stress

BMC Plant Biology

Research Article

Javier Tejedor-Cano¹  Pilar Prieto-Dapena¹  Concepción Almoguera¹  Juan Jordano¹  José-María Personat¹ 

[1] Departamento de Biotecnología Vegetal, Instituto de Recursos Naturales y Agrobiología de Sevilla, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), 41012, Seville, Spain;

关键词: Combined overexpression;    Drastic oxidative stress;    Enhanced seed longevity;    Heat Shock Factors;    Severe dehydration;    Stress tolerance;    Transgenic tobacco;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2229-14-56

 received in 2014-01-17, accepted in 2014-02-26,  发布年份 2014

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundWe have previously reported that the seed-specific overexpression of sunflower (Helianthus annuus L.) Heat Shock Factor A9 (HaHSFA9) enhanced seed longevity in transgenic tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum L.). In addition, the overexpression of HaHSFA9 in vegetative organs conferred tolerance to drastic levels of dehydration and oxidative stress.ResultsHere we found that the combined overexpression of sunflower Heat Shock Factor A4a (HaHSFA4a) and HaHSFA9 enhanced all the previously reported phenotypes described for the overexpression of HaHSFA9 alone. The improved phenotypes occurred in coincidence with only subtle changes in the accumulation of small Heat Shock Proteins (sHSP) that are encoded by genes activated by HaHSFA9. The single overexpression of HaHSFA4a in vegetative organs (which lack endogenous HSFA9 proteins) did not induce sHSP accumulation under control growth conditions; neither it conferred thermotolerance. The overexpression of HaHSFA4a alone also failed to induce tolerance to severe abiotic stress. Thus, a synergistic functional effect of both factors was evident in seedlings.ConclusionsOur study revealed that HaHSFA4a requires HaHSFA9 for in planta function. Our results strongly support the involvement of HaHSFA4a and HaHSFA9 in transcriptional co-activation of a genetic program of longevity and desiccation tolerance in sunflower seeds. These results would also have potential application for improving seed longevity and tolerance to severe stress in vegetative organs.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Personat et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2014. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.