AhABI4s Negatively Regulate Salt-Stress Response in Peanut

Abstract

Soil salinity is one of the major factors that limit the area of cultivable land and yield potential of crops. The ability of salt tolerance varies with plant species. Peanut (Arachis hypogaea L.) is a moderately salt-sensitive and economically important crop, however, their biological processes involved in salt-stress response remain unclear. In this study, we investigated the role of A. hypogaea L. ABSCISIC ACID INSENSITIVE 4s (AhABI4s) in salt tolerance and elucidated its mode of action in peanuts. The results showed that the downregulation of AhABI4s via whole plant virus-induced gene silencing has enhanced the survival rate, biomass accumulation, and root/shoot ratio of peanut seedlings in response to salt-stress. Transcriptomics, quantitative proteomics, and phosphoproteomic analyses were performed using AhABI4s-silenced and Mock plants. The expression pattern of 15,247 genes, 1,900 proteins, and 2,620 phosphorylation sites were affected by silencing of AhABI4s in peanut leaf and root after sodium chloride (NaCl) treatment. Among them, 63 potential downstream target genes of ABI4 changed consistently at both transcription and translation levels, and the protein/phosphorylation levels of 31 ion transporters/channels were also affected. Electrophoretic mobility shift assays (EMSA) showed that ABI4 was able to bind to the promoters of HSP70, fructokinase (FRK), and pyruvate kinase (PK) coding genes in vitro. In addition, we also detected a binding preference of AhABI4 for CACT(G/T)GCA motif in the promoters of down-regulated genes in peanut leaf. Collectively, the potential downstream targets which were regulated at the levels of transcription and translation, binding preference, and in vivo phosphorylation sites that had been revealed in this study will provide new insight into the AhABI4s-mediated salt tolerance regulation mechanism in peanuts.

Fine mapping of qAHPS07 and functional studies of AhRUVBL2 controlling pod size in peanut (Arachis hypogaea L.)

“…Our research group has established a mature and efficient peanut whole plant VIGS system and verified its high efficiency in peanut gene silencing (Luo et al ., 2021). Therefore, this system was used to explore the function of AhRUVBL2 in peanut.…”

“…The effects of AhRUVBL2 gene silencing were investigated using the VIGS system with tobacco rattle virus (TRV) (Liu et al ., 2002), using whole plant VIGS system described for peanut (Luo et al ., 2021). Part of the CDS of AhRUVBL2 (303 bp) (Table S12) was PCR‐amplified from peanut cDNA and cloned into the pTRV2 vector to generate the plasmids pTRV2‐ AhRUVBL2 .…”

Genome-wide characterization of the PP2C gene family in peanut (Arachis hypogaea L.) and the identification of candidate genes involved in salinity-stress response

“…The tissue specificity of AhPP2Cs was determined from RNA-Seq data obtained for 22 different tissues at different developmental stages during peanut growth (Clevenger et al, 2016) obtained from the peanut database. The RNA-Seq data from salt-stressed peanut seedlings (Luo et al, 2021) was obtained from the public repository of NCBI 13 under the biological project accession number, PRJNA560660. The FPKM values of AhPP2C-A, including subclades AI and AII and other AhPP2Cs were extracted from the data set.…”

Physiological and biochemical mechanisms underlying the role of anthocyanin in acquired tolerance to salt stress in peanut (Arachis hypogaea L.)

“…Peanut was considered to be moderately salt-tolerant crop by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). However, peanut production suffers great challenge by salt-stress because of the widely distributed saline-alkaline land in major peanut regions in China, India and United States of America ( Luo et al., 2021 ). Salinity significantly inhibits peanut germination, relative growth rate and dry mass production ( Meena et al., 2016 ), induced photo-inhibition because of damaging the photosynthetic apparatus ( Qin et al., 2011 ), and restrained Ca, K and other mineral elements uptake, and eventually reduced yield and quality ( Zhang et al., 2020 ).…”