scholarly journals Cytokinin at the Crossroads of Abiotic Stress Signalling Pathways

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (8) ◽  
pp. 2450 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jaroslav Pavlů ◽  
Jan Novák ◽  
Vladěna Koukalová ◽  
Markéta Luklová ◽  
Břetislav Brzobohatý ◽  
...  

Cytokinin is a multifaceted plant hormone that plays major roles not only in diverse plant growth and development processes, but also stress responses. We summarize knowledge of the roles of its metabolism, transport, and signalling in responses to changes in levels of both macronutrients (nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, sulphur) and micronutrients (boron, iron, silicon, selenium). We comment on cytokinin’s effects on plants’ xenobiotic resistance, and its interactions with light, temperature, drought, and salinity signals. Further, we have compiled a list of abiotic stress-related genes and demonstrate that their expression patterns overlap with those of cytokinin metabolism and signalling genes.

2018 ◽  
Vol 19 (11) ◽  
pp. 3404 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pengjie Wang ◽  
Di Chen ◽  
Yucheng Zheng ◽  
Shan Jin ◽  
Jiangfan Yang ◽  
...  

The SQUAMOSA promoter binding protein (SBP)-box gene family is a plant-specific transcription factor family. This family plays a crucial role in plant growth and development. In this study, 20 SBP-box genes were identified in the tea plant genome and classified into six groups. The genes in each group shared similar exon-intron structures and motif positions. Expression pattern analyses in five different tissues demonstrated that expression in the buds and leaves was higher than that in other tissues. The cis-elements and expression patterns of the CsSBP genes suggested that the CsSBP genes play active roles in abiotic stress responses; these responses may depend on the abscisic acid (ABA), gibberellic acid (GA), and methyl jasmonate (MeJA) signaling pathways. Our work provides a comprehensive understanding of the CsSBP family and will aid in genetically improving tea plants.


Biomolecules ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (12) ◽  
pp. 1800
Author(s):  
Dongliang Hu ◽  
Lijuan Wei ◽  
Weibiao Liao

Brassinosteroids (BRs) are known as the sixth type of plant hormone participating in various physiological and biochemical activities and play an irreplaceable role in plants. Small-molecule compounds (SMCs) such as nitric oxide (NO), ethylene, hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), and hydrogen sulfide (H2S) are involved in plant growth and development as signaling messengers. Recently, the involvement of SMCs in BR-mediated growth and stress responses is gradually being discovered in plants, including seed germination, adventitious rooting, stem elongation, fruit ripening, and stress responses. The crosstalk between BRs and SMCs promotes plant development and alleviates stress damage by modulating the antioxidant system, photosynthetic capacity, and carbohydrate metabolism, as well as osmotic adjustment. In the present review, we try to explain the function of BRs and SMCs and their crosstalk in the growth, development, and stress resistance of plants.


Author(s):  
Bo Shu ◽  
YaChao Xie ◽  
Fei Zhang ◽  
Dejian Zhang ◽  
Chunyan Liu ◽  
...  

Calmodulin-like (CML) proteins represent a diverse family of protein in plants, and play significant roles in biotic and abiotic stress responses. However, the involvement of citrus CMLs in plant responses to drought stress (abiotic stress) and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) colonization remain relatively unknown. We characterized the citrus CML genes by analyzing the EF-hand domains and a genome-wide search, and identified a total of 38 such genes, distributed across at least nine chromosomes. Six tandem duplication clusters were observed in the CsCMLs, and 12 CsCMLs exhibited syntenic relationships with Arabidopsis thaliana CMLs. Gene expression analysis showed that 29 CsCMLs were expressed in the roots, and exhibited differential expression patterns. The regulation of CsCMLs expression was not consistent with the cis-elements identified in their promoters. CsCML2, 3, and 5 were upregulated in response to drought stress, and AMF colonization repressed the expression of CsCML7, 9, 12, 13,20, 27, 28, and 35,and induced that of CsCML1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 10, 11, 14, 15, 16, 18, 25, 30, 33, and 37. Furthermore, AMF colonization and drought stress exerted a synergistic effect, evident from the enhanced repression of CsCML7, 9, 12, 13, 27, 28, and 35 and enhanced expression of CsCML2, 3, and 5 under AMF colonization and drought stress. The present study provides valuable insights into the CsCML gene family and its responses to AMF colonization and drought stress.


Forests ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (9) ◽  
pp. 722
Author(s):  
An ◽  
Ma ◽  
Du ◽  
Yu ◽  
Li ◽  
...  

ATP-binding cassette (ABC) transporters comprise a transport system superfamily which is ubiquitous in eukaryotic and prokaryotic cells. In plants, ABC transporters play important roles in hormone transport and stress tolerance. In this study, 15 BhABC transporters encoded by genes identified from the transcriptome of Betula halophila were categorized into four subfamilies (ABCB, ABCF, ABCG, and ABCI) using structural domain and phylogenetic analyses. Upon B. halophila exposure to exogenous phytohormones and abiotic stressors, gene expression patterns and transcriptional responses for each subfamily of genes were obtained using semi-quantitative RT-PCR analysis. The results demonstrated that expression of most genes belonging to ABCB and ABCG subfamilies changed in response to exogenous phytohormone exposures and abiotic stress. These results suggest that BhABC genes may participate in hormone transport and that their expression may be influenced by ABA-dependent signaling pathways involved in abiotic stress responses to various stressors.


2003 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 412-414 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jin Sun Kim ◽  
Yeon Ok Kim ◽  
Hyun Ju Ryu ◽  
Yeon Sig Kwak ◽  
Ji Yeon Lee ◽  
...  

2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (22) ◽  
pp. 5676 ◽  
Author(s):  
Haifeng Yan ◽  
Mingzhi Li ◽  
Yuping Xiong ◽  
Jianming Wu ◽  
Jaime A. Teixeira da Silva ◽  
...  

WRKY proteins are a large superfamily of transcription factors that are involved in diverse biological processes including development, as well as biotic and abiotic stress responses in plants. WRKY family proteins have been extensively characterized and analyzed in many plant species, including Arabidopsis, rice, and poplar. However, knowledge on WRKY transcription factors in Santalum album is scarce. Based on S. album genome and transcriptome data, 64 SaWRKY genes were identified in this study. A phylogenetic analysis based on the structures of WRKY protein sequences divided these genes into three major groups (I, II, III) together with WRKY protein sequences from Arabidopsis. Tissue-specific expression patterns showed that 37 SaWRKY genes were expressed in at least one of five tissues (leaves, roots, heartwood, sapwood, or the transition zone), while the remaining four genes weakly expressed in all of these tissues. Analysis of the expression profiles of the 42 SaWRKY genes after callus was initiated by salicylic acid (SA) and methyl jasmonate (MeJA) revealed that 25 and 24 SaWRKY genes, respectively, were significantly induced. The function of SaWRKY1, which was significantly up-regulated by SA and MeJA, was analyzed. SaWRKY1 was localized in the nucleus and its overexpression improved salt tolerance in transgenic Arabidopsis. Our study provides important information to further identify the functions of SaWRKY genes and to understand the roles of SaWRKY family genes involved in the development and in SA- and MeJA-mediated stress responses.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shuxun Yu ◽  
Pengyun Chen ◽  
Fei wei ◽  
Shuaishuai Cheng ◽  
Liang Ma ◽  
...  

Abstract Background Valine-glutamine (VQ) motif-containing proteins play important roles in plant growth, development and abiotic stress response. For many plant species, the VQ genes have been identified and their functions have been described. However, little is known about the origin, evolution, and functions (and underlying mechanisms) of the VQ family genes in cotton. Results In this study, we comprehensively analyzed the characteristics of 268 VQ genes from four Gossypium genomes and found that the VQ proteins evolved into ten clades, and each clade had a similar structural and conservative motif. The expansion of the VQ gene was mainly through segmental duplication, followed by dispersal. Expression analysis revealed that the VQ genes play important roles in response to salt and drought stress, especially GhVQ18 and GhVQ84 were significantly high expression in PEG stress and salt stress. Further analysis showed that GhVQ genes were co-expressed with GhWRKY transcription factors (TFs), and microRNAs (miRNAs) could hybridize to their cis-regulatory elements. Conclusions The results in this study broaden our understanding of the VQ gene family in plants, and the analysis of the structure, conserved elements, and expression patterns of the VQ genes provide a solid foundation for exploring their specific functions in the abiotic stress responses in cotton. Our study provides significant insight into the potential functions of VQ genes in cotton.


BMC Genomics ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Intikhab Alam ◽  
Cui-Cui Liu ◽  
Hong-Liu Ge ◽  
Khadija Batool ◽  
Yan-Qing Yang ◽  
...  

Abstract Background Plant homeodomain (PHD) finger proteins are widely present in all eukaryotes and play important roles in chromatin remodeling and transcriptional regulation. The PHD finger can specifically bind a number of histone modifications as an “epigenome reader”, and mediate the activation or repression of underlying genes. Many PHD finger genes have been characterized in animals, but only few studies were conducted on plant PHD finger genes to this day. Brassica rapa (AA, 2n = 20) is an economically important vegetal, oilseed and fodder crop, and also a good model crop for functional and evolutionary studies of important gene families among Brassica species due to its close relationship to Arabidopsis thaliana. Results We identified a total of 145 putative PHD finger proteins containing 233 PHD domains from the current version of B. rapa genome database. Gene ontology analysis showed that 67.7% of them were predicted to be located in nucleus, and 91.3% were predicted to be involved in protein binding activity. Phylogenetic, gene structure, and additional domain analyses clustered them into different groups and subgroups, reflecting their diverse functional roles during plant growth and development. Chromosomal location analysis showed that they were unevenly distributed on the 10 B. rapa chromosomes. Expression analysis from RNA-Seq data showed that 55.7% of them were constitutively expressed in all the tested tissues or organs with relatively higher expression levels reflecting their important housekeeping roles in plant growth and development, while several other members were identified as preferentially expressed in specific tissues or organs. Expression analysis of a subset of 18 B. rapa PHD finger genes under drought and salt stresses showed that all these tested members were responsive to the two abiotic stress treatments. Conclusions Our results reveal that the PHD finger genes play diverse roles in plant growth and development, and can serve as a source of candidate genes for genetic engineering and improvement of Brassica crops against abiotic stresses. This study provides valuable information and lays the foundation for further functional determination of PHD finger genes across the Brassica species.


2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (5) ◽  
pp. 1810
Author(s):  
Shu-Ping Zhao ◽  
Xin-Yuan Song ◽  
Lin-Lin Guo ◽  
Xiang-Zhan Zhang ◽  
Wei-Jun Zheng

The plant-special SHI-RELATED SEQUENCE (SRS) family plays vital roles in various biological processes. However, the genome-wide analysis and abiotic stress-related functions of this family were less reported in soybean. In this work, 21 members of soybean SRS family were identified, which were divided into three groups (Group I, II, and III). The chromosome location and gene structure were analyzed, which indicated that the members in the same group may have similar functions. The analysis of stress-related cis-elements showed that the SRS family may be involved in abiotic stress signaling pathway. The analysis of expression patterns in various tissues demonstrated that SRS family may play crucial roles in special tissue-dependent regulatory networks. The data based on soybean RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) and quantitative Real-Time PCR (qRT-PCR) proved that SRS genes were induced by drought, NaCl, and exogenous abscisic acid (ABA). GmSRS18 significantly induced by drought and NaCl was selected for further functional verification. GmSRS18, encoding a cell nuclear protein, could negatively regulate drought and salt resistance in transgenic Arabidopsis. It can affect stress-related physiological index, including chlorophyll, proline, and relative electrolyte leakage. Additionally, it inhibited the expression levels of stress-related marker genes. Taken together, these results provide valuable information for understanding the classification of soybean SRS transcription factors and indicates that SRS plays important roles in abiotic stress responses.


Author(s):  
Ikuo Takahashi ◽  
Tsuyoshi Ota ◽  
Tadao Asami

Abstract Hydroxycinnamic acid amides (HCAAs) are involved in various developmental processes as well as in biotic and abiotic stress responses. Among them, the presence of spermidine derivatives, such as N1,N8-di(coumaroyl)-spermidine and N1,N8-di(sinapoyl)-spermidine, and their biosynthetic genes have been reported in Arabidopsis, but their functions in plants are still unknown. We chemically synthesized the above mentioned spermidine derivatives to assess their physiological functions in Arabidopsis. We evaluated the growth and development of chemically treated Arabidopsis and demonstrated that these compounds inhibited seed germination, hypocotyl elongation, and primary root growth, which could be due to modulation of plant hormone homeostasis and signaling. The results suggest that these compounds are regulatory metabolites that modulate plant growth and development.


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