Jiang Yifei, Xie Bin, Luo Xiong, Li Yangsheng
State Key Laboratory of Hybrid Rice, College of Life Sciences, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China.
Plants (Basel). 2025 Jul 14;14(14):2174. doi: 10.3390/plants14142174.
Drought stress poses a major constraint on global crop productivity. Although aspartic proteases (APs) are primarily characterized in plant disease resistance, their roles in abiotic stress adaptation remain largely unexplored. Here, we demonstrate that rice () OsAP4 critically regulates drought stress tolerance at the seedling stage. Genetic manipulation through overexpression (-OE) or CRISPR knockout (-KO) resulted in significantly reduced or enhanced stress tolerance compared to wild-type plants, respectively. Through integrated approaches including yeast two-hybrid, bimolecular fluorescence complementation, pull-down, co-immunoprecipitation, and protein degradation assays, we established that OsAP4 physically interacts with and destabilizes OsCATA/OsCATC, two catalase enzymes responsible for reactive oxygen species (ROS) scavenging. Importantly, OsAP4 modulates ROS production under drought stress treatment conditions. Together, these findings reveal a novel OsAP4-OsCATA/OsCATC regulatory module governing rice drought stress responses.
干旱胁迫是全球作物生产力的主要限制因素。尽管天冬氨酸蛋白酶（APs）主要在植物抗病性方面具有特征，但它们在非生物胁迫适应中的作用仍 largely 未被探索。在这里，我们证明水稻（）OsAP4在幼苗期关键地调节干旱胁迫耐受性。与野生型植物相比，通过过表达（-OE）或CRISPR敲除（-KO）进行基因操作分别导致胁迫耐受性显著降低或增强。通过包括酵母双杂交、双分子荧光互补、下拉、免疫共沉淀和蛋白质降解分析在内的综合方法，我们确定OsAP4与负责活性氧（ROS）清除的两种过氧化氢酶OsCATA/OsCATC发生物理相互作用并使其不稳定。重要的是，OsAP4在干旱胁迫处理条件下调节ROS产生。总之，这些发现揭示了一个新的OsAP4-OsCATA/OsCATC调控模块，该模块控制水稻干旱胁迫反应。
