Project description:Drought and salinity are two main abiotic-stresses negatively affecting crop growth and productivity worldwide with largely decreasing crop yields. The understanding of plant responses to stresses in physiology, genetics, and molecular biology will be greatly helpful to improve the tolerance of crops to abiotic-stresses through genetic engineering.To identify the genetic loci that control drought and salt tolerance in rice, we performed a large-scale screen for the mutants with altered drought and salt tolerance. A drought and salt tolerance (dst) mutant line was isolated.In this series, we compare the transcriptome of wild-type plant Zhonghua11 and dst mutants under the normal growth conditions. Keywords: genetic modification
Project description:The OsCPK4 gene is a member of the complex gene family of the Calcium-dependent protein kinases (CPKs) in rice. Expression of OsCPK4 is induced by high salinity, drought and the phytohormone abscisic acid. The OsCPK4 protein localizes to the plasma membrane. Transgenic rice overexpressing OsCPK4 enhances tolerance to salt and drought stress, the transgenic plants having stronger water-holding capability than control plants. Microarray analysis of OsCPK4 rice plants revealed up-regulation of genes involved in metabolism, particularly lipid metabolism, as well as genes involved in oxidative stress and redox control. Meanwhile, OsCPK4 overexpression has no impact on the expression of the well-characterized abiotic stress-associated transcription factors (i.e. DREB and NAC), or the typical salt and drought-inducible genes (i.e. LEA genes, including Dehydrin genes). Under salt stress conditions, the OsCPK4 transgenic lines showed lesser membrane lipid peroxidation as compared to control plants, indicating that OsCPK4 rice plants have a better capacity to prevent oxidative damage in cellular membrane lipids. Collectively, our data suggest that OsCPK4-mediated processes protect the plant cell from uncontrolled redox reactions affecting membrane functions, which, in turn, results in salt and drought tolerance. OsCPK4 shows great promise for genetic improvement of tolerance to abiotic stress in rice.
Project description:High mobility group (HMG) proteins play an important role in regulation of gene transcription through modulate the structure of DNA. In this study, OsHMGB707, a HMG gene localized in rice drought resistance QTL interval, was isolated and the function on rice stress resistance was identified. Overexpression of OsHMGB707 significantly enhanced the drought resistance of the transgenic rice plants, whereas the OsHMGB707-RNAi transgenic rice plants exhibited slightly decrease in drought stress tolerance. To search the downstream genes regulated by OsHMGB707, we performed microarray analysis of the OsHMGB707-overexpressing, OsHMGB707-RNAi and wild-type plants under both normal conditions using Affymetrix Rice Genome Genechip. 21-day-old plants of the OsHMGB707-overexpressing line OE1, OsHMGB707-RNAi line RNAi1 as well as the wild-type plants were used in the normal condition.
Project description:Drought and salinity are two main abiotic-stresses negatively affecting crop growth and productivity worldwide with largely decreasing crop yields. The understanding of plant responses to stresses in physiology, genetics, and molecular biology will be greatly helpful to improve the tolerance of crops to abiotic-stresses through genetic engineering. To identify the genetic loci that control drought and salt tolerance in rice, we performed a large-scale screen for the mutants with altered drought and salt tolerance. A drought and salt tolerance (dst) mutant line was isolated. In this series, we compare the transcriptome of wild-type plant Zhonghua11 and dst mutants under the normal growth conditions. Keywords: genetic modification 6 samples (3 biological replicates for each line) were used in this experiment.
Project description:Dongxiang wild rice (Oryza rufipogon Griff.) is the progenitor of cultivated rice (Oryza sativa L.) and is well known for its superior level of tolerance against cold, drought and diseases. To date, however, little is known about the salt-tolerant character of Dongxiang wild rice. To elucidate the molecular genetic mechanisms of salt-stress tolerance in Dongxiang wild rice, the Illumina HiSeq 2000 platform was used to analyze the transcriptome profiles of the leaves and roots at the seedling stage under salt stress compared with those under normal conditions. The analysis results for the sequencing data showed that 6,867 transcripts were differentially expressed in the leaves (2,216 up-regulated and 4,651 down-regulated) and 4,988 transcripts in the roots (3,105 up-regulated and 1,883 down-regulated). Among these differentially expressed genes, the detection of many transcription factor genes demonstrated that multiple regulatory pathways were involved in salt stress tolerance. In addition, the differentially expressed genes were compared with the previous RNA-Seq analysis of salt-stress responses in cultivated rice Nipponbare, indicating the possible specific molecular mechanisms of salt-stress responses for Dongxiang wild rice. A large number of the salt-inducible genes identified in this study were co-localized onto fine-mapped salt-tolerance-related quantitative trait loci, providing candidates for gene cloning and elucidation of molecular mechanisms responsible for salt-stress tolerance in rice.
Project description:Jasmonates (JA) and abscisic acid (ABA) are phytohormones known to play important roles in plant response and adaptation to various abiotic stresses including salinity, drought, wounding, and cold. JAZ (JASMONATE ZIM-domain) proteins have been reported to play negative roles in JA signaling. However, direct evidence is still lacking that JAZ proteins regulate drought resistance. In this study, OsJAZ1 was investigated for its role in drought resistance in rice. Expression of OsJAZ1 was strongly responsive to JA treatment, and it was slightly responsive to ABA, salicylic acid, and abiotic stresses including drought, salinity, and cold. The OsJAZ1-overexpression rice plants were more sensitive to drought stress treatment than the wild-type rice Zhonghua 11 (ZH11) at both the seedling and reproductive stages, while the jaz1 T-DNA insertion mutant plants showed increased drought tolerance compared to the wild-type plants. The OsJAZ1-overexpression plants were hyposensitive to MeJA and ABA, whereas the jaz1 mutant plants were hypersensitive to MeJA and ABA. In addition, there were significant differences in shoot and root length between the OsJAZ1 transgenic and wild-type plants under the MeJA and ABA treatments. A subcellular localization assay indicated that OsJAZ1 was localized in both the nucleus and cytoplasm. Transcriptome profiling analysis by RNA-seq revealed that the expression levels of many genes in the ABA and JA signaling pathways exhibited significant differences between the OsJAZ1-overexpression plants and wild-type ZH11 under drought stress treatment. Quantitative real-time PCR confirmed the expression profiles of some of the differentially expressed genes, including OsNCED4, OsLEA3, RAB21, OsbHLH006, OsbHLH148, OsDREB1A, OsDREB1B, SNAC1, and OsCCD1. These results together suggest that OsJAZ1 plays a role in regulating the drought resistance of rice partially via the ABA and JA pathways.
Project description:Several homeobox genes belonging to HD-ZIP I subfamily are highly induced by drought stress at various developmental stages in rice. To analyze the role of a candidate HD-ZIP I subfamily member, OsHOX24, we constitutively overexpressed it in rice. The physiological analyses revealed that overexpression of OsHOX24 gene reduced drought stress tolerance in transgenic plants as compared to wild-type. We used microarrays to study the global effect of OsHOX24 overexpression in rice as compared to wild-type under control and drought stress condition.
Project description:Dongxiang wild rice (Oryza rufipogon Griff.) is the progenitor of cultivated rice (Oryza sativa L.) and is well known for its superior level of tolerance against cold, drought and diseases. To date, however, little is known about the salt-tolerant character of Dongxiang wild rice. To elucidate the molecular genetic mechanisms of salt-stress tolerance in Dongxiang wild rice, the Illumina HiSeq 2000 platform was used to analyze the transcriptome profiles of the leaves and roots at the seedling stage under salt stress compared with those under normal conditions. The analysis results for the sequencing data showed that 6,867 transcripts were differentially expressed in the leaves (2,216 up-regulated and 4,651 down-regulated) and 4,988 transcripts in the roots (3,105 up-regulated and 1,883 down-regulated). Among these differentially expressed genes, the detection of many transcription factor genes demonstrated that multiple regulatory pathways were involved in salt stress tolerance. In addition, the differentially expressed genes were compared with the previous RNA-Seq analysis of salt-stress responses in cultivated rice Nipponbare, indicating the possible specific molecular mechanisms of salt-stress responses for Dongxiang wild rice. A large number of the salt-inducible genes identified in this study were co-localized onto fine-mapped salt-tolerance-related quantitative trait loci, providing candidates for gene cloning and elucidation of molecular mechanisms responsible for salt-stress tolerance in rice. Leaf and root mRNA profiles of Dongxiang wild rice at the seedling stage with or without salt stress were generated by deep sequencing, on Illumina Hiseq 2000 platform.
Project description:GRAS transcription factors are plant-specific proteins that play diverse roles in plant development and abiotic stress responses, over-expression of OsGRAS23, a GRAS gene in rice, showed improved drought resistance. To search the downstream genes of OsGRAS23, we performed microarray analysis of the OsGRAS23-overexpressing and wild-type plants under both normal and drought stress conditions using Affymetrix Rice Genome Genechip. 21-day-old plants of the OsGRAS23-overexpressing line OE1 as well as the wild-type plants were used in the drought treatment.
Project description:Drought is a major environmental constraint affecting physiological, biochemical and molecular changes of crops, causing loss in crop productivities. Understanding the molecular mechanisms of drought tolerance is important for crop biotechnology. Here, we report that the rice (Oryza sativa) homeodomain-leucine zipper class IV transcription factor gene, Rice outermost cell-specific gene 10 (Roc10), improves drought tolerance and grain yield by increasing lignin accumulation in ground tissues of rice plants. Overexpression of Roc10 significantly enhanced drought tolerance of transgenic rice plants at the vegetative stages of growth with highly effective photosystem and reduction of water loss rate as compared with non-transgenic control and RNAi plants. More importantly, Roc10 overexpression plants had higher drought tolerance at the reproductive stage of growth with higher grain yield over controls under field-drought conditions. We identified downstream and putative target genes of Roc10 by using RNA-seq and ChIP-seq data of rice shoots. Roc10 overexpression elevated the expression levels of lignin biosynthetic genes in shoots with a concomitant increase in accumulation of lignin. The overexpression and RNAi lines showed opposite patterns of lignin accumulation. The Roc10 is mainly expressed in the outer cell layers including epidermis and vasculature of shoots that coincides with areas of increased lignification. Furthermore, the Roc10 was found to directly bind to the promoter of PEROXIDASEN/PEROXIDASE38, a key gene in lignin biosynthesis. Together, our findings suggested that the Roc10 confers drought stress tolerance by enhancing lignin biosynthesis in ground tissues of rice plants.