Tao Keyu, Li Yan, Hu Yue, Li Yongxiang, Zhang Dengfeng, Li Chunhui, He Guanhua, Song Yanchun, Shi Yunsu, Li Yu, Wang Tianyu, Lu Yuncai, Liu Xuyang
College of Advanced Agriculture and Ecological Environment, Heilongjiang University, Harbin, 150080 China.
State Key Lab of Crop Gene Resource and Breeding, Institute of Crop Sciences, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, 100081 China.
Mol Breed. 2023 Nov 24;43(12):84. doi: 10.1007/s11032-023-01432-x. eCollection 2023 Dec.
Drought is one of the major abiotic stresses affecting the maize production worldwide. As a cross-pollination crop, maize is sensitive to water stress at flowering stage. Drought at this stage leads to asynchronous development of male and female flower organ and increased interval between anthesis and silking, which finally causes failure of pollination and grain yield loss. In the present study, the expansin gene was cloned and its function in drought tolerance was characterized. An indel variant in promoter of is significantly associated with natural variation in drought-induced anthesis-silking interval. The drought susceptible haplotypes showed lower expression level of than tolerant haplotypes and lost the -regulatory activity of ZmDOF29. Increasing expression in transgenic maize decreases anthesis-silking interval and improves grain yield under both drought and well-watered environments. In addition, the expression pattern of was analyzed. These findings provide insights into the genetic basis of drought tolerance and a promising gene for drought improvement in maize breeding.
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11032-023-01432-x.
干旱是影响全球玉米生产的主要非生物胁迫之一。作为一种异花授粉作物，玉米在开花期对水分胁迫敏感。此阶段的干旱会导致雄花和雌花器官发育不同步，以及开花与吐丝间隔增加，最终导致授粉失败和籽粒产量损失。在本研究中，克隆了扩张蛋白基因并对其在耐旱性中的功能进行了表征。该基因启动子中的一个插入缺失变异与干旱诱导的开花-吐丝间隔的自然变异显著相关。干旱敏感单倍型的该基因表达水平低于耐旱单倍型，并且失去了ZmDOF29的调控活性。在转基因玉米中增加该基因的表达可缩短开花-吐丝间隔，并在干旱和水分充足的环境下均提高籽粒产量。此外，还分析了该基因的表达模式。这些发现为耐旱性的遗传基础提供了见解，并为玉米育种中的抗旱改良提供了一个有前景的基因。
在线版本包含可在10.1007/s11032-023-01432-x获取的补充材料。
