Signaling linkage between environmental stress resistance and leaf senescence in Arabidopsis.

Plants possess versatile strategies that permit efficient use of limited nutrient resources during senescing process. This metabolic adjustment is critical for prevention of diverse cellular damage and thus for reproductive success and offspring production, particularly under environmental stress conditions. However, it is largely unknown how age-dependent resistance to cellular damages is established and how it is influenced by environmental stress signals during senescing process. We found that the VNI2 (VND-INTERACTING 2) transcription factor, which belongs to the NAC (NAM/ATAF1, 2/CUC2) transcription factor family, plays a role in the age-dependent induction of stress resistance. The VNI2 transcription factor is transcriptionally induced during senescing process and regulates COR/RD genes by binding directly to their promoters. The COR/RD proteins play a role in the protection from diverse cellular damages during senescing process. Notably, the transcriptional activation activity of VNI2 is further elevated under high salinity. These results indicate that plants increase environmental stress resistance by inducing the VNI2 gene to assure their reproductive success, supporting signaling crosstalk between stress resistance response and senescing process.