Overexpression of PheNAC3 from moso bamboo promotes leaf senescence and enhances abiotic stress tolerance in Arabidopsis

Lihua Xie; Miaomiao Cai; Xiangyu Li; Huifang Zheng; Yali Xie; Zhanchao Cheng; Yucong Bai; Juan Li; Shaohua Mu; Jian Gao

doi:10.7717/peerj.8716

Overexpression of PheNAC3 from moso bamboo promotes leaf senescence and enhances abiotic stress tolerance in Arabidopsis

PeerJ. 2020 Mar 31:8:e8716. doi: 10.7717/peerj.8716. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Lihua Xie^{1

2}, Miaomiao Cai¹, Xiangyu Li¹, Huifang Zheng¹, Yali Xie¹, Zhanchao Cheng¹, Yucong Bai¹, Juan Li¹, Shaohua Mu¹, Jian Gao¹

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Bamboo and Rattan Science and Technology, International Center for Bamboo and Rattan, State Forestry and Grassland Administration, Beijing, China.
² Pingdingshan University, Pingdingshan, Henan, China.

Abstract

The NAC family is one of the largest transcription factor families unique to plants, which regulates the growth and development, biotic and abiotic stress responses, and maturation and senescence in plants. In this study, PheNAC3, a NAC gene, was isolated and characterized from moso bamboo (Phyllostachys edulis). PheNAC3 belong to the NAC1 subgroup and has a conserved NAC domain on the N-terminus, which with 88.74% similarity to ONAC011 protein. PheNAC3 localized in the nucleus and exhibited transactivation activity. PheNAC3 was upregulated during the process of senescence of leaves and detected shoots. PheNAC3 was also induced by ABA, MeJA, NaCl and darkness, but it had no remarkable response to PEG and SA treatments. Overexpression of PheNAC3 could cause precocious senescence in Arabidopsis. Transgenic Arabidopsis displayed faster seed germination, better seedling growth, and a higher survival rate than the wild-type under salt or drought stress conditions. Moreover, AtSAG12 associated with senescence and AtRD29A and AtRD29b related to ABA were upregulated by PheNAC3 overexpression, but AtCAB was inhibited. These findings show that PheNAC3 may participate in leaf senescence and play critical roles in the salt and drought stress response.

Keywords: Abiotic stress; Moso bamboo; NAC transcription factors; NAM domain; Overexpression; Phylogenetic analysis; Senescence; Subcellular localization; Transcriptional activity; Transgenic Arabidopsis.

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the National Key R&D program of China (No. 2018YFD0600101). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.