Over‐expression of a transcription factor regulating ABA‐responsive gene expression confers multiple stress tolerance

Abstract

SummaryUnfavourable environmental conditions, such as drought, freezing and high salinity, are major limiting factors of plant productivity. Plants perceive and respond adaptively to such 'abiotic stress' conditions, and the adaptive process is controlled mainly by the phytohormone, abscisic acid (ABA). The hormone, whose level increases under various stress conditions, functions as a signal to trigger adaptive responses that include changes in gene expression patterns. We have recently reported transcription factors that regulate the ABA-responsive gene expression. As ABA mediates adaptation to several common abiotic stresses, we investigated whether the transcription factors are involved in various stress responses. Here, we report that over-expression of ABF3, one of the factors, confers tolerance to chilling, freezing, high temperature and oxidative stress in addition to drought.Our results indicate that ABF3 is involved in multiple stress responses, and that it may be a useful genetic resource for the engineering of plant stress tolerance.

The Association Among Gene Expression Responses to Nine Abiotic Stress Treatments in Arabidopsis thaliana

“…At the molecular level, certain heat-shock proteins are commonly elicited in response to various stress conditions (Vierling 1991;Feder 1999;Sørensen et al 2003). Likewise, in the Arabidopsis model system, shared elements among drought, salinity, and temperature extreme response pathways have been identified, such as the DREB transcription factors and the phytohormone abscisic acid (ABA) (Liu et al 1998;Kim et al 2004;Mauch-Mani and Mauch 2005).…”

“…In the model system Arabidopsis thaliana, the physiological basis of these resistance mechanisms has been pursued with the ultimate goal of elucidating the biochemical pathways involved in stress perception, signal transduction, and adaptive response (e.g., Seki et al 2001Seki et al , 2002Kreps et al 2002;Hazen et al 2003;Takahashi et al 2004;Liu et al 2005). While many stress responses appear to be specific to different forms of stress, it is clear that some stress responses are general and potentially confer tolerance to multiple types of stress (Chinnusamy et al 2004;Kim et al 2004). The genes associated with these general stress responses may yield insight into biochemical networks underlying stress resistance and may provide targets for stress-resistance engineering in plant species.…”

Identification of an Arabidopsis Nodulin-Related Protein in Heat Stress

“…(Robertson et al, 1994), and ABA pretreatment can increase cell viability and growth upon HS (Zhang and Fevereiro, 2007). In addition, the overexpression of transcription factor ABF3 in ABA signaling induced high-temperature tolerance in transgenic Arabidopsis (Kim et al, 2004). These results suggested that ABA could also be involved in the response to heat stress.…”

“…These results indicate that the functions of AtNRP1 in thermal adaptation may be independent of the HSF-controlled regulon. Ding et al, 2008), and some studies have indicated that the ABA content was increased in response to heat stress (Kim et al, 2004;Zhang and Fevereiro, 2007). So we propose AtNRP1 may function in thermotolerance through the ABA signaling pathway.…”

Two-year field monitoring shows little evidence that transgenic potato containing ABF3 significantly alters its rhizosphere microbial community structure

“…These genes contain cis-regulatory elements in their promoter regions, such as the abscisic acid-responsive element (ABRE), which is regulated by various upstream transcription factors, or TFs (Tuteja 2007). Among those TFs, a small family of ABRE-binding proteins has been identified, i.e., ABRE-binding factors (ABFs) or ABAresponsive element-binding proteins (AREBs) (Kim et al 2004). Expression of these proteins is also induced by ABA (Choi et al 2000).…”