Arabidopsis AtbHLH112 protein positively regulates tolerance to abiotic stress and binds to the E-box and a novel motif GCG-box

ABSTRACT: Plant basic helix-loop-helix (bHLH) transcription factors are involved in physiological and developmental processes, and also play essential roles in abiotic stresses. However, their exact roles in abiotic stress are still need to be elucidated, and most of bHLHs have not been functionally characterized. In the present study, we characterized the functional role of AtbHLH112 in response to abiotic stresses. AtbHLH112 is a nuclear-localized protein, and its nuclear-localization is induced by salt, drought and ABA. Besides binding to E-box motif, AtbHLH112 is found to bind to a novel motif with the sequence M-bM-^@M-^\GG[GT]CC[GT][GA][TA]CM-bM-^@M-^] (GCG-box), and the binding affinity is induced by salt and ABA. Gain- and loss-of-function analyses showed that the transcript level of AtbHLH112 is positively correlated with salt and drought tolerance. AtbHLH112 mediates stress tolerance by upregulating the expression of P5CS genes and decreasing the expression of P5CDH and PRODH genes to increase proline levels, and via enhancing the expression of POD and SOD genes to improve ROS scavenging ability. All data together suggested that AtbHLH112 regulates the expression of genes through binding to GCG-box and E-box to mediate the physiological stress responses, including proline biosynthesis and ROS scavenging pathways to enhance stress tolerance. Differentially expression genes of AtbHLH112-overexpression plants, mutant (SALK_033618C) plants and wild type of Columbia Arabidopsis thaliana were measured under salt stressed and normal condition for 3 hours, respectively. Three independent experiments were performed at each treatment using different plants for each experiment.

ORGANISM(S): Arabidopsis thaliana

SUBMITTER: Yujia Liu 

PROVIDER: E-GEOD-60260 | biostudies-arrayexpress |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-arrayexpress