National Engineering Laboratory of Crop Stress Resistance Breeding, School of Life Sciences, Anhui Agricultural University, Hefei, Anhui, 230036, China.
National Engineering Laboratory of Crop Stress Resistance Breeding, School of Life Sciences, Anhui Agricultural University, Hefei, Anhui, 230036, China.
Plant Physiol Biochem. 2024 Jun;211:108684. doi: 10.1016/j.plaphy.2024.108684. Epub 2024 May 1.
Abscisic acid-, stress-, and ripening-induced (ASR) proteins in plants play a significant role in plant response to diverse abiotic stresses. However, the functions of ASR genes in maize remain unclear. In the present study, we identified a novel drought-induced ASR gene in maize (ZmASR1) and functionally characterized its role in mediating drought tolerance. The transcription of ZmASR1 was upregulated under drought stress and abscisic acid (ABA) treatment, and the ZmASR1 protein was observed to exhibit nuclear and cytoplasmic localization. Moreover, ZmASR1 knockout lines generated with the CRISPR-Cas9 system showed lower ROS accumulation, higher ABA content, and a higher degree of stomatal closure than wild-type plants, leading to higher drought tolerance. Transcriptome sequencing data indicated that the significantly differentially expressed genes in the drought treatment group were mainly enriched in ABA signal transduction, antioxidant defense, and photosynthetic pathway. Taken together, the findings suggest that ZmASR1 negatively regulates drought tolerance and represents a candidate gene for genetic manipulation of drought resistance in maize.
植物中的脱落酸、胁迫和成熟诱导（ASR）蛋白在植物应对各种非生物胁迫中发挥着重要作用。然而，ASR 基因在玉米中的功能尚不清楚。在本研究中，我们在玉米中鉴定了一个新的干旱诱导 ASR 基因（ZmASR1），并对其介导耐旱性的功能进行了表征。ZmASR1 的转录在干旱胁迫和脱落酸（ABA）处理下上调，ZmASR1 蛋白被观察到定位于核和细胞质。此外，利用 CRISPR-Cas9 系统生成的 ZmASR1 敲除系表现出比野生型植物更低的 ROS 积累、更高的 ABA 含量和更高的气孔关闭程度，从而具有更高的耐旱性。转录组测序数据表明，干旱处理组中显著差异表达的基因主要富集在 ABA 信号转导、抗氧化防御和光合作用途径中。综上所述，这些发现表明 ZmASR1 负调控耐旱性，是玉米遗传抗旱性操纵的候选基因。
