Transcriptome analysis in contrasting maize inbred lines and functional analysis of five maize NAC genes under drought stress treatment

Ning Ding; Ying Zhao; Weixiang Wang; Xuyang Liu; Wentong Shi; Dengfeng Zhang; Jiajie Chen; Shuo Ma; Qingpeng Sun; Tianyu Wang; Min Lu

doi:10.3389/fpls.2022.1097719

Transcriptome analysis in contrasting maize inbred lines and functional analysis of five maize NAC genes under drought stress treatment

Front Plant Sci. 2023 Jan 19:13:1097719. doi: 10.3389/fpls.2022.1097719. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Ning Ding¹, Ying Zhao¹, Weixiang Wang¹, Xuyang Liu², Wentong Shi¹, Dengfeng Zhang², Jiajie Chen¹, Shuo Ma¹, Qingpeng Sun¹, Tianyu Wang², Min Lu¹

Affiliations

¹ Beijing Key Laboratory for Agricultural Application and New Technique, College of Plant Science and Technology, Beijing University of Agriculture, Beijing, China.
² Institute of Crop Science, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences/the National Key Facility for Crop Gene Resources and Genetic Improvement (NFCRI), Beijing, China.

Abstract

Drought substantially influences crop growth and development. NAC (NAM, ATAF1/2, and CUC2) transcription factors (TFs) have received much attention for their critical roles in drought stress responses. To explore the maize NAC genes in response to drought stress, the transcriptome sequencing data of NAC TFs in two maize inbred lines, the drought tolerance line H082183 and the sensitive line Lv28, were used to screen the differentially expressed genes (DEGs). There were 129 maize NAC protein-coding genes identified, of which 15 and 20 NAC genes were differentially expressed between the two genotypes under MD and SD treatments, respectively. Meanwhile, the phylogenetic relationship of 152 non-redundant NAC family TFs in maize was generated. The maize NAC family proteins were grouped into 13 distinct subfamilies. Five drought stress-responsive NAC family members, which were designed as ZmNAP, ZmNAC19, ZmNAC4, ZmJUB1(JUBGBRUNNEN1), and ZmNAC87, were selected for further study. The expression of ZmNAP, ZmNAC19, ZmNAC4, ZmJUB1, and ZmNAC87 were significantly induced by drought, dehydration, polyethylene glycol (PEG) stress, and abscisic acid (ABA) treatments. The overexpressing Arabidopsis of these five NAC genes was generated for functional characterization, respectively. Under different concentrations of NaCl, D-mannitol stress, and ABA treatments, the sensitivity of ZmNAP-, ZmNAC19-, ZmNAC4-, ZmJUB1-, and ZmNAC87-overexpressing lines was significantly increased at the germination stage compared to the wild-type lines. The overexpression of these five NAC members significantly improved the drought stress tolerance in transgenic Arabidopsis. Yeast two-hybrid screening analysis revealed that ZmNAP may cooperatively interact with 11 proteins including ZmNAC19 to activate the drought stress response. The above results inferred that ZmNAP, ZmNAC19, ZmNAC4, ZmJUB1, and ZmNAC87 may play important roles in the plant response to drought stress and may be useful in bioengineering breeding and drought tolerance improvement.

Keywords: NAC; drought stress; maize; transcriptome analysis; transgenic Arabidopsis.

Grants and funding

This work was funded by Scientific Research Project of Beijing Educational Committee (KM202010020012), “Youth Talent Support Plan” of Beijing Educational Committee (CIT&TCD201904053), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 31501314).