Heterologous expression of bacterial dehydrin gene in Arabidopsis thaliana promotes abiotic stress tolerance

Nadir Zaman Khan; Akhtar Ali; Waqar Ali; Muhammad Aasim; Tariq Khan; Zaryab Khan; Iqbal Munir

doi:10.1007/s12298-023-01358-w

Heterologous expression of bacterial dehydrin gene in Arabidopsis thaliana promotes abiotic stress tolerance

Physiol Mol Biol Plants. 2023 Sep;29(9):1239-1246. doi: 10.1007/s12298-023-01358-w. Epub 2023 Sep 20.

Authors

Nadir Zaman Khan¹, Akhtar Ali^{2

3}, Waqar Ali⁴, Muhammad Aasim¹, Tariq Khan¹, Zaryab Khan¹, Iqbal Munir⁴

Affiliations

¹ Department of Biotechnology, University of Malakand, Chakdara, Pakistan.
² Department of Biomedical Science and Engineering, Konkuk University, Seoul, 05029 South Korea.
³ Department Molecular Stress Physiology, Center of Plant Systems Biology and Biotechnology, 4000 Plovdiv, Bulgaria.
⁴ Institute of Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering, The University of Agriculture Peshawar, Peshawar, Pakistan.

PMID: 38024953
PMCID: PMC10678877 (available on 2024-09-01)
DOI: 10.1007/s12298-023-01358-w

Abstract

Salinity, low temperature, and drought are major environmental factors in agriculture leading to reduced crop yield. Dehydrins (DHNs) are induced transcriptionally during cellular dehydration and accumulate in different tissues during abiotic stresses. Here we isolated and characterized a bacterial gene BG757 in Arabidopsis, encoding a putative dehydrin type protein. ABA induces the expression of various dehydrins in plants, therefore, to elucidate the potential role, ABA sensitivity was examined in Arabidopsis transgenic lines expressing BG757. Interestingly, BG757-expressing plants showed hypersensitivity towards NaCl and ABA during seed germination. In addition to germination, BG757-expressing plants also showed root growth retardation in the presence of ABA and NaCl when compared with wild type (WT), suggesting that BG757 positively regulate salt stress and ABA response. Furthermore, BG757-expressing plants showed significant drought tolerance compared with WT. Consistent with drought tolerance, expression levels of stress inducible genes (DREB2A, RD22, RD26, LEA7 and SOS1) were strongly upregulated in transgenic plants compared with WT. All together these results suggest that heterologous expression of bacterial gene, BG757 in plants promotes resistance to environmental stresses.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12298-023-01358-w.

Keywords: Abscisic acid; Arabidopsis; Bacterial dehydrin; Drought.

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