The cold-induced basic helix-loop-helix transcription factor gene MdCIbHLH1encodes an ICE-like protein in apple

BMC Plant Biology

Research Article

Hui-Feng Li¹  Chun-Xiang You²  Xing-Bin Xie²  Yu Qiao²  Yu-Xin Yao²  Xiao-Ming Feng²  Qiang Zhao²  Yu-Jin Hao²  Ling-Ling Zhao³ 

[1] Shandong Institute of Pomology, 271000, Tai-An, Shandong, China;The State Key Laboratory of Crop Biology; National Research Center for Apple Engineering and Technology; College of Horticulture Science and Engineering, Shandong Agricultural University, 271018, Tai-An, Shandong, China;Yantai Academy of Agricultural Science, 265500, Yantai, Shandong, China;

关键词: Cold Stress;    Electrophoretic Mobility Shift Assay;    Cold Tolerance;    Freezing Tolerance;    bHLH Domain;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2229-12-22

 received in 2011-08-17, accepted in 2012-02-15,  发布年份 2012

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundPlant growth is greatly affected by low temperatures, and the expression of a number of genes is induced by cold stress. Although many genes in the cold signaling pathway have been identified in Arabidopsis, little is known about the transcription factors involved in the cold stress response in apple.ResultsHere, we show that the apple bHLH (basic helix-loop-helix) gene MdCIbHLH1 (Cold-Induced bHLH1), which encodes an ICE-like protein, was noticeably induced in response to cold stress. The MdCIbHLH1 protein specifically bound to the MYC recognition sequences in the AtCBF3 promoter, and MdCIbHLH1 overexpression enhanced cold tolerance in transgenic Arabidopsis. In addition, the MdCIbHLH1 protein bound to the promoters of MdCBF2 and favorably contributed to cold tolerance in transgenic apple plants by upregulating the expression of MdCBF2 through the CBF (C-repeat-binding factor) pathway. Our findings indicate that MdCIbHLH1 functions in stress tolerance in different species. For example, ectopic MdCIbHLH1 expression conferred enhanced chilling tolerance in transgenic tobacco. Finally, we observed that cold induces the degradation of the MdCIbHLH1 protein in apple and that this degradation was potentially mediated by ubiquitination and sumoylation.ConclusionsBased on these findings, MdCIbHLH1 encodes a transcription factor that is important for the cold tolerance response in apple.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Feng et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2012. 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 cited.