Mulberry EIL3 confers salt and drought tolerances and modulates ethylene biosynthetic gene expression

Changying Liu; Jun Li; Panpan Zhu; Jian Yu; Jiamin Hou; Chuanhong Wang; Dingpei Long; Maode Yu; Aichun Zhao

doi:10.7717/peerj.6391

Mulberry EIL3 confers salt and drought tolerances and modulates ethylene biosynthetic gene expression

PeerJ. 2019 Feb 19:7:e6391. doi: 10.7717/peerj.6391. eCollection 2019.

Authors

Changying Liu¹, Jun Li², Panpan Zhu^{1

3}, Jian Yu¹, Jiamin Hou¹, Chuanhong Wang⁴, Dingpei Long¹, Maode Yu¹, Aichun Zhao¹

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Silkworm Genome Biology, Key Laboratory of Sericultural Biology and Genetic Breeding, Chongqing, China.
² Guiyang University of Chinese Medicine, Guiyang, China.
³ Bioengineering College of Chongqing University, Chongqing, China.
⁴ The National Key Engineering Lab of Crop Stress Resistance Breeding, School of Life Sciences, Anhui Agricultural University, Hefei, China.

Abstract

Ethylene regulates plant abiotic stress responses and tolerances, and ethylene-insensitive3 (EIN3)/EIN3-like (EIL) proteins are the key components of ethylene signal transduction. Although the functions of EIN3/EIL proteins in response to abiotic stresses have been investigated in model plants, little is known in non-model plants, including mulberry (Morus L.), which is an economically important perennial woody plant. We functionally characterized a gene encoding an EIN3-like protein from mulberry, designated as MnEIL3. A quantitative real-time PCR analysis demonstrated that the expression of MnEIL3 could be induced in roots and shoot by salt and drought stresses. Arabidopsis overexpressing MnEIL3 exhibited an enhanced tolerance to salt and drought stresses. MnEIL3 overexpression in Arabidopsis significantly upregulated the transcript abundances of ethylene biosynthetic genes. Furthermore, MnEIL3 enhanced the activities of the MnACO1 and MnACS1 promoters, which respond to salt and drought stresses. Thus, MnEIL3 may play important roles in tolerance to abiotic stresses and the expression of ethylene biosynthetic genes.

Keywords: Abiotic stresses; Arabidopsis; Drought; MnEIL3; Mulberry; Salt stress.

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the China Agriculture Research System (No. CARS-18–ZJ0201), the Special Fund for Agro-scientific Research in the Public Interest of China (No. 201403064), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. XDJK2018C008), and the National Natural Sciences Foundation of China (Grant No. 31801126). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.