VvBAP1 Is Involved in Cold Tolerance in Vitis vinifera L.

Abstract

The majority of commercial grape cultivars originate from the European grape. While these cultivars have excellent organoleptic qualities, they suffer from a relatively poor tolerance to the cold experienced during winter, resulting in significant damage to grapevines. Thus, low temperature is one of the bottlenecks that restrict the further growth of the grape industry. Research on the mechanism of cold tolerance in grapes is therefore very important. BON association protein 1 (BAP1) is a recently discovered phospholipid-binding protein. In Arabidopsis, the expression of AtBAP1 can be regulated via low temperature; however, the function of BAP1 in the grapevine has not been reported. The VvBAP1 gene was cloned in our previous studies in grapes, and bioinformatics analysis showed that it harbors the conservative calcium-dependent C2 protein domain. However, little is known about its function and underlying mechanism. In this study, cold treatment was applied to the cold-resistant grape varieties ‘F-242’ and ‘Zuoyouhong’ as well as to the cold-sensitive grape varieties ‘Cabernet Sauvignon’ and ‘Chardonnay.’ The expression level of VvBAP1 in the cold-resistant varieties was significantly higher than in the cold-sensitive varieties, indicating that VvBAP1 could be associated with the cold response processes in the grapevine. Using the cold-resistant grape variety ‘F-242’ as material, with the 4°C and CaCl2 treatment, the relative expression of VvBAP1 was determined via qRT-PCR. Both low temperature and low-temperature signal Ca2+ induced VvBAP1 expression. In addition, the VvBAP1 gene was cloned and transferred into Arabidopsis to generate VvBAP1 overexpressing plants. Biochemical assays and gene expression analyses were conducted on plants subjected to low temperature treatments (4 and -8°C). The obtained results showed that the activities of superoxide dismutase and peroxidase in these transgenic plants were higher than those in wild type (WT) plants, and that cell membrane permeability and malondialdehyde content were both lower compared to WT plants. Furthermore, the content of soluble sugars and the expression levels of sugar-metabolizing related genes, such as BAM4-7, SS4, and G6PD5, were significantly higher than those of WT plants. Furthermore, the expression of low temperature response signal genes, including CBF1, CBF3, COR15a, COR6.6, COR27, and KIN1, were also enhanced. In summary, these results showed that VvBAP1 could strengthen the cold resistance in the grapevine through adjusting and controlling the sugar content and activating antioxidant enzyme activity.

VvBAP1, a Grape C2 Domain Protein, Plays a Positive Regulatory Role Under Heat Stress

“…To reveal the biological functions of VvBAP1 in grapevines, We cloned VvBAP1 from the resistant grapevine cultivar 'F-242'and functionally characterized it as the nearest orthologous to AtBAP1 in our previous reports (Zhang et al, 2014). Then, we found that VvBAP1 was correlated with the cold response process in grapevines, VvBAP1 could regulate the soluble sugar content and enhance antioxidant enzyme activities, thereby promoting the grape cold resistance (Hou et al, 2018). In the research presented here, we showed that the elevated expression of VvBAP1 was higher in the resistant cultivars compare to that from sensitive cultivars under high temperature conditions ( Figure 1A).…”

“…Whether Ca 2+ regulates the affinity of VvBAP1 binding to its phospholipids substrate and therefore is involved in the heat stress response signaling network, will be necessary to investigate in follow-up experiments. In our previous study, the VvBAP1 promoter has the MBS element binding with the MYB transcription factor (Hou et al, 2018). The MYB family is one of most crucial transcription factor families involved in regulating the physiological process such as development, metabolism, and stress response in plants (Dubos et al, 2010).…”

“…Wild type Arabidopsis thaliana used herein was of the ecotype Columbia (Col-0). The transgenic Arabidopsis plants overexpressing VvBAP1 ( OEVvBAP1-38 and OEVvBAP1-40 ) were described in our previous study ( Hou et al., 2018 ). Regarding plant growth, we surface sterilized the Arabidopsis seeds and maintained them at 4°C for 72 h. After that, they were germinated and cultured on sterile MS solid medium at 22 ± 1°C under a 16 h light/8 h dark cycle (light intensity of 120 μmol·m -2 ·s -1 ).…”

“…In our previous study, we cloned and functionally characterized VvBAP1 from the grapevine ‘F-242’ as the nearest orthologue to AtBAP1 ( Zhang et al., 2014 ). Then, we found that VvBAP1 was correlated with the cold resistance in grapevine, VvBAP1 could regulate the soluble sugar content and enhance antioxidant enzyme activities, thereby promoting the grape cold resistance ( Hou et al., 2018 ). Recently, Cao et al.…”

Identification of Selective Sweeps in the Domesticated Table and Wine Grape (Vitis vinifera L.)

“…Due to the advancement of high-throughput sequencing technology (Alaimo et al, 2017), a huge number of QTLs underlying important phenotypic traits have been explored, such as the MADs-Box gene VviAGL11 on chromosome 18 which codes seedlessness (Mejia et al, 2011;Royo et al, 2018), VvMybA1 on chromosome 2 that affects grape skin color, and several other traits like berry firmness (Carreño et al, 2014;Correa et al, 2016) and resistance (van Heerden et al, 2014;Pap et al, 2016;Zyprian et al, 2016;Zendler et al, 2017;Hou et al, 2018). However, the highest 4 positive selection signals shared by both table and wine grape, which were chromosome 1: 15,167,366 bp, chromosome 10: 12,113,058 bp, chromosome 13: 13,996,633 bp and chromosome 16, 6,961,106 bp, were not linked to those QTLs.…”