OsGRAS23, a rice GRAS transcription factor gene, is involved in drought stress response through regulating expression of stress-responsive genes

BMC Plant Biology

Research Article

Xiaohua Liang¹  Hongyan Liu¹  Xuefeng Ding¹  Xiaosong Ma¹  Kai Xu¹  Shoujun Chen¹  Tianfei Li¹  Lijun Luo² 

[1] Shanghai Agrobiological Gene Center, 201106, Shanghai, China;Shanghai Agrobiological Gene Center, 201106, Shanghai, China;Huazhong Agriculture University, 430070, Wuhan, China;

关键词: Drought resistance;    GRAS;    Rice;    Transcription factor;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12870-015-0532-3

 received in 2014-12-15, accepted in 2015-05-21,  发布年份 2015

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundDrought is a major abiotic stress factors that reduces agricultural productivity. GRAS transcription factors are plant-specific proteins that play diverse roles in plant development. However, the functions of a number of GRAS genes identified in rice are unknown, especially the GRAS genes related to rice drought resistance have not been characterized.ResultsIn this study, a novel GRAS transcription factor gene named OsGRAS23, which is located in a drought-resistant QTL interval on chromosome 4 of rice, was isolated. The expression of OsGRAS23 was induced by drought, NaCl, and jasmonic acid treatments. The OsGRAS23-GFP fused protein was localized in the nucleus of tobacco epidermal cells. A trans-activation assay in yeast cells demonstrated that the OsGRAS23 protein possessed a strong transcriptional activation activity. OsGRAS23-overexpressing rice plants showed improved drought resistance and oxidative stress tolerance as well as less H2O2 accumulation compared with the wild-type plants. Furthermore, microarray analysis showed that several anti-oxidation related genes were up-regulated in the OsGRAS23-overexpressing rice plants. The yeast one hybrid test indicated that OsGRAS23 could bind to the promoters of its potential target genes.ConclusionsOur results demonstrate that OsGRAS23 encodes a stress-responsive GRAS transcription factor and positively modulates rice drought tolerance via the induction of a number of stress-responsive genes.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Xu et al. 2015. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), 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.