Biotech Updates

Overexpression of the MYB37 Enhances Both Drought Tolerance and Seed Productivity in Arabidopsis

December 9, 2015

Although a lot of genes have been revealed to participate in abscisic acid (ABA) signaling, many of the additional components involved in ABA signaling remain to be discovered. The team of Yong-Tao Yu from Tsinghua University reports that overexpression of MYB37, aR2R3 MYB subgroup 14 transcription factor in Arabidopsis thaliana, confers hypersensitive phenotypes to ABA in all the major ABA responses.

Interestingly, MYB37-overexpression improves plant tolerance to drought, enhances growth of mature plants and seed productivity as well as delays flowering, which suggests that this gene may be used for improving crop adaptability to drought environment and productivity. These findings suggest that the MYB37 transcription factor plays an important, positive role in plant response to ABA and drought stress, and also plays a positive role in the regulation of seed production.

For more information, read the full article in Plant Molecular Biology.