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Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) MADS-box transcription factor SlMBP8 regulates drought, salt tolerance and stress-related genes

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Abstract

Adverse environmental conditions, such as drought, high salinity and extreme temperature, severely affect the growth and productivity of crop plants. MADS-box transcription factors have been described to participate in stress responses. In our study, a MADS-box transcription factor gene, SlMBP8, has been cloned from tomato. The expression of SlMBP8 was induced by Methyl-jasmonic acid (MeJA), high salinity, high temperature, wounding and dehydration. Whereas, the transcript of SlMBP8 was down-regulated by Abscisic acid (ABA), 1-aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylic acid (ACC) and Indole-3-acetic acid (IAA). To further elucidate the function of SlMBP8 gene in response to abiotic stress, plants by knockdown of SlMBP8 through RNA interference (RNAi) were used for investigating the effect of drought and salt stresses on tomato seedlings of wild type (WT) and SlMBP8-RNAi lines. Seedling growth of SlMBP8-RNAi plants was less inhibited by salt than WT at post-germination stage. Transgenic plants became more tolerant to drought and salt stress than WT plants in soil, which was demonstrated by higher levels of chlorophyll and water contents, lower water loss rate and malondialdehyde (MDA) contents. In addition, the expression of multiple stresses related genes were significantly up-regulated in the RNAi lines under control and abiotic stresses. Taken together, these results suggest that SlMBP8 function as a negative stress-responsive transcription factor in the drought and high salinity stress signaling pathways, and may have promising applications in the engineering of drought- and salt-tolerant tomato.

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Abbreviations

ABA:

Abscisic acid

ACC:

1-Aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylic acid

GA3 :

Gibberellin acid

IAA:

Indole-3-acetic acid

MeJA:

Methyl-jasmonic acid

ORF:

Open reading frame

RNAi:

RNA interference

MDA:

Malondialdehyde

RWC:

Relative water content

RWL:

Rate of water loss

Chl:

Chlorophyll

MS:

Murashige and Skoog

ROS:

Reactive oxygen species

TFs:

Transcription factors

FW:

Fresh weights

DW:

Dry weights

SW:

Saturated weights

WT:

Wild-type

RT-PCR:

Reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 31572129), and the Natural Science Foundation of Chongqing of China (cstc2015jcyjA80026), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. 106112015CDJZR235504).

Author contributions

GC and ZH designed and managed the research work and improved the manuscript. WY, JH, ZZ, XY and BC performed the experiments. WY wrote the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory of Molecular Biology of Tomato, Bioengineering College, Chongqing University, Chongqing, 400044, People’s Republic of China

    Wencheng Yin, Zongli Hu, Jingtao Hu, Zhiguo Zhu, Xiaohui Yu, Baolu Cui & Guoping Chen

  2. Bioengineering College, Chongqing University, Room 523, Campus B, 174 Shapingba Main Street, Chongqing, 400030, People’s Republic of China

    Guoping Chen

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  1. Wencheng Yin
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  2. Zongli Hu
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  3. Jingtao Hu
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Yin, W., Hu, Z., Hu, J. et al. Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) MADS-box transcription factor SlMBP8 regulates drought, salt tolerance and stress-related genes. Plant Growth Regul 83, 55–68 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10725-017-0283-2

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