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Sucrose (Suc) transporters (SUCs or SUTs) are important regulators in plant growth and stress tolerance. However, the mechanism of SUCs in plant abiotic stress resistance remains to be dietermined. Here, we found that AtSUC9 expression was induced by abiotic stress, including salt, osmotic and cold stress conditions. Disruption of AtSUC9 led to sensitive responses to abiotic stress during seed germination and seedling growth. Further analyses indicated that the sensitivity phenotype of Atsuc9 mutants resulted from higher Suc content in shoots and lower Suc content in roots, as compared with that in wild-type (WT) plants. In addition, we found that the expression of AtSUC9 is induced in particular by low levels of exogenous and endogenous Suc, and deletion of AtSUC9 affected the expression of the low Suc level-responsive genes. AtSUC9 also showed an obvious response to treatments with low concentrations of exogenous Suc during seed germination, seedling growth and Suc distribution, and Atsuc9 mutants hardly grew in abiotic stress treatments without exogenous Suc. Moreover, our results illustrated not only that deletion of AtSUC9 blocks abiotic stress-inducible ABA accumulation but also that Atsuc9 mutants had a lower content of endogenous ABA in stress conditions than in normal conditions. Deletion of AtSUC9 also inhibited the expression of many ABA-inducible genes (SnRk2.2/3/6, ABF2/3/4, ABI1/3/4, RD29A, KIN1 and KIN2). These results indicate that AtSUC9 is induced in particular by low Suc levels then mediates the balance of Suc distribution and promotes ABA accumulation to enhance Arabidopsis abiotic stress resistance.

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