Soybean C2H2-Type Zinc Finger Protein GmZFP3 with Conserved QALGGH Motif Negatively Regulates Drought Responses in Transgenic Arabidopsis

Abstract

Plant response to environmental stresses is regulated by a complicated network of regulatory and functional genes. In this study, we isolated the putative stress-associated gene GmZFP3 (a C2H2-type Zinc finger protein gene) based on the previous finding that it was one of two genes located in the QTL region between the Satt590 and Satt567 markers related to soybean tolerance to drought. Temporal and spatial expression analysis using quantitative real-time PCR indicated that GmZFP3 was primarily expressed in roots, stems and leaf organs and was expressed at low levels in flowers and soybean pods. Moreover, GmZFP3 expression increased in response to polyethylene glycol (PEG) and Abscisic acid (ABA) treatments. In addition, subcellular localization analysis indicated that GmZFP3 was ubiquitously distributed in plant cells. Transgenic experiments indicated that GmZFP3 played a negative role in plant tolerance to drought. Analysis of ABA-related marker gene expression in Arabidopsis suggested that GmZFP3 might be involved in the ABA-dependent pathway during the drought stress response. Taken together, these results suggest that soybean GmZFP3 negatively regulates the drought response.

C2H2 Zinc Finger Proteins: Master Regulators of Abiotic Stress Responses in Plants

“…GmZFP3 plays a negative role in plant tolerance to drought stress. Transgenic Arabidopsis plants of GmZFP3 show enhanced expression of ABA-related marker genes, including DREB2A, LHY1, MYB2, RCI3, PAD3, CCA1, and UGT71B6, suggesting that GmZFP3 regulates the drought stress response through an ABA-dependent signaling pathway (Zhang et al, 2016b). Transgenic plants overexpressing OsMSR15 show hypersensitivity to exogenous ABA.…”

“…Zinc finger proteins are also involved in high temperature (Kim et al, 2015) and H + (Fan et al, 2015) tolerance mediated by ABA signaling pathways. C2H2 zinc finger protein genes improve plant tolerance to stresses by ABA-dependent pathway (Zhang et al, 2016b) or ABAdependent pathway , whereas some genes improve plant tolerance to stresses through both ABA-dependent and ABA-independent pathways (Sun et al, 2010). Abiotic stresses, as well as ABA signaling pathways, together with C2H2 zinc finger proteins constitute a complex network and there is many overlaps between different signaling pathways (Knight and Knight, 2001;Kiełbowicz-Matuk, 2012;Alam et al, 2019).…”

Heterologous Expression of a Glycine soja C2H2 Zinc Finger Gene Improves Aluminum Tolerance in Arabidopsis

“…The C2H2 ZFP family is one of the biggest transcription factor (TF) families in plants. Since Takatsuji discovered the first plant C2H2 zinc-finger protein gene EPF1 [24], many C2H2 ZFP family genes have been proved to play various roles in the resistance to abiotic stresses and plant growth as shown by previous studies [23,29,41]. However, few studies have attempted to interpret the C2H2 ZFP members' functional roles and underlying transcriptional regulation mechanism in soybean.…”

“…According to the number and position of the cysteine and histidine residues, zinc-finger proteins are divided into C2H2, C4, C6, C4HC3, C2HC, C2HC5, and combined types. Among them, C2H2 ZFP is a eukaryotic transcription factor, which contains 1-4 zinc finger structures, and, in plants, it has a highly conserved QALGGH motif, which plays an important role in abiotic stress [23]. Since the first C2H2 ZFP gene EPF1 was isolated from petunia [24], more C2H2 ZFP family genes have been found in plants and widely reported to be involved in responses to biotic and abiotic stresses [25].…”

“…A wheat gene TaZAT8 played essential roles in regulating tolerance to Pi deprivation through mediating P acquisition, ROS homeostasis and root system development [35]. Among the ZFP genes in soybean, over-expression of GsZFP1 improved the tolerance to drought in Arabidopsis, while GmZFP3 negatively regulated its drought tolerance [23]. Overexpression of GmZF1 made the transgenic Arabidopsis more adaptable to cold stress [36].…”