Ogata Takuya, Nagatoshi Yukari, Yamagishi Noriko, Yoshikawa Nobuyuki, Fujita Yasunari
Biological Resources and Post-Harvest Division, Japan International Research Center for Agricultural Sciences (JIRCAS), Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan.
Plant Pathology Laboratory, Faculty of Agriculture, Iwate University, Morioka, Iwate, Japan.
PLoS One. 2017 Apr 18;12(4):e0175650. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0175650. eCollection 2017.
Drought is a major threat to global soybean production. The limited transformation potential and polyploid nature of soybean have hindered functional analysis of soybean genes. Previous research has implicated farnesylation in the plant's response to abscisic acid (ABA) and drought tolerance. We therefore used virus-induced gene silencing (VIGS) to evaluate farnesyltransferase genes, GmERA1A and GmERA1B (Glycine max Enhanced Response to ABA1-A and -B), as potential targets for increasing drought resistance in soybean. Apple latent spherical virus (ALSV)-mediated GmERA1-down-regulated soybean leaves displayed an enhanced stomatal response to ABA and reduced water loss and wilting under dehydration conditions, suggesting that GmERA1A and GmERA1B negatively regulate ABA signaling in soybean guard cells. The findings provide evidence that the ALSV-VIGS system, which bypasses the need to generate transgenic plants, is a useful tool for analyzing gene function using only a single down-regulated leaf. Thus, the ALSV-VIGS system could constitute part of a next-generation molecular breeding pipeline to accelerate drought resistance breeding in soybean.
干旱是全球大豆生产的主要威胁。大豆有限的转化潜力和多倍体性质阻碍了大豆基因的功能分析。先前的研究表明法尼基化参与植物对脱落酸（ABA）的反应和耐旱性。因此，我们利用病毒诱导基因沉默（VIGS）来评估法尼基转移酶基因GmERA1A和GmERA1B（大豆对ABA增强反应1-A和- B）作为提高大豆抗旱性的潜在靶点。苹果潜隐球形病毒（ALSV）介导的GmERA1下调的大豆叶片在脱水条件下对ABA的气孔反应增强，水分损失和萎蔫减少，这表明GmERA1A和GmERA1B在大豆保卫细胞中负向调节ABA信号。这些发现提供了证据，即绕过产生转基因植物需求的ALSV-VIGS系统是仅使用单个下调叶片分析基因功能的有用工具。因此，ALSV-VIGS系统可以构成下一代分子育种流程的一部分，以加速大豆的抗旱育种。
