Key Laboratory of Bio-resource and Eco-environment of Ministry of Education, College of Life Sciences, State Key Laboratory of Hydraulics and Mountain River Engineering, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China.
Plant Cell Environ. 2020 Nov;43(11):2699-2711. doi: 10.1111/pce.13871. Epub 2020 Sep 9.
Abscisic acid (ABA) signaling is a vital plant signaling pathway for plant responses to stress conditions. ABA treatment can alter global gene expression patterns and cause significant phenotypic changes. We investigated the responses to ABA treatment during flowering in Arabidopsis thaliana. Dipping the flowers of CARK3 T-DNA mutants in ABA solution, led to less reduction of pollen fertility than in the wild type plants (Col-0). We demonstrated that PMEIL, a gene located downstream of CARK3, directly affects pollen fertility. Due to the close arrangement of CARK3 and PMEIL, CARK3 expression represses transcription of PMEIL in an ABA-dependent manner through transcriptional interference. Our study uncovers a molecular mechanism underlying ABA-mediated pollen sterility and provides an example of how transcriptional interference caused by close arrangement of genes may mediate stress responses during plant reproduction.
脱落酸（ABA）信号转导是植物对胁迫条件响应的重要植物信号通路。ABA 处理可以改变全局基因表达模式并引起显著的表型变化。我们研究了拟南芥开花过程中对 ABA 处理的响应。将 CARK3 T-DNA 突变体的花朵浸入 ABA 溶液中，花粉育性的降低程度小于野生型植物（Col-0）。我们证明，位于 CARK3 下游的 PMEIL 基因直接影响花粉育性。由于 CARK3 和 PMEIL 紧密排列，CARK3 通过转录干扰以 ABA 依赖性方式抑制 PMEIL 的转录。我们的研究揭示了 ABA 介导的花粉不育的分子机制，并提供了一个例子，说明由于基因紧密排列而引起的转录干扰如何在植物繁殖过程中介导胁迫响应。
