expression enhances low-temperature stress resistance in tomato plants.

Herein, we identified the tomato gene as a MYB family transcription factor of the R2R3-MYB subfamily. We additionally determined that the promoter region contains photoresponsive, abiotic stress-responsive, and hormone-responsive regulatory elements, and we detected higher expression in the reproductive organs of tomato than that in vegetative organs, with the expression being highest in ripe fruits and in roots. expression was also shown to be cold-inducible. The protein encoded by localized to the nucleus wherein it was found to mediate the transcriptional activation of target genes through its C-terminal domain. Overexpression of in tomato plants conferred enhanced tolerance to cold stress. Under such cold stress conditions, we found that proline levels in the leaves of overexpressing transgenic plants were higher than those in WT plants. In addition, overexpression was associated with the enhanced expression of cold response genes including and . We also found that the overexpression of further enhanced the cold-induced upregulation of and Taken together, these results suggest that may be involved in the C-repeat binding transcription factor (CBF) and proline synthesis pathways, thereby improving tomato plant cold resistance.