Biotech Updates

BdPP2CA6 Gene Positively Regulates Salt Tolerance in Transgenic Arabidopsis

March 1, 2017

The phytohormone abscisic acid (ABA) is essential in plant response to biotic and abiotic stresses. Although the ABA signaling model is well established in Arabidopsis, ABA receptor PYL family and clade A PP2C subfamily are not yet characterized in the monocot model plant Brachypodium distachyon.

Fan Zhang and Qiuhui Wei from Huazhong University of Science and Technology identified 12 PYLs and 8 clade A PP2Cs from the B. distachyon genome and successfully cloned 12 PYLs and 7 clade A PP2Cs. Analysis indicates that most of the identified genes respond to several signal molecules and abiotic stresses.

However, protein–protein interaction analysis revealed that many BdPYLs and BdPP2CAs participate in the ABA-PYL-PP2C-SnRK2 signaling pathway. One clade A PP2C, named BdPP2CA6, interacted with BdPYL11 in the absence of ABA. While most clade A PP2C members from Arabidopsis showed negative regulation in ABA signaling pathway, BdPP2CA6-overexpression in transgenic Arabidopsis exhibited ABA hypersensitive phenotype, resulting in enhanced stomatal closure and salinity tolerance.

These results indicate that BdPP2CA6 positively regulates ABA and stress signal pathway in the transgenic Arabidopsis plant seedlings.

For more information, read the article in Frontiers in Plant Science.