Chilling tolerance in three tomato transgenic lines overexpressing CBF3 gene controlled by a stress inducible promoter

Abstract

Plants integrate and monitor low temperature signals to cope with the continual variations in their environment. Arabidopsis thaliana cold responsive-element binding factor 3 (AtCBF3) plays its role in various cellular activities by modulating multiple genes induced under chilling stress. In this work, AtCBF3 transcription was remarkably induced following chilling stress. AtCBF3-overexpressors namely AtCBF3-Rio Grande, AtCBF3-Moneymaker, and AtCBF3-Roma showed defensible response to various levels of chilling stress, while their isogenic wild type plants indicated hypersensitive response to chilling stress. Detailed photosynthetic studies revealed that AtCBF3 gene has harmonious influences on the expression of a large set of genes by virtue of improved stomatal conductance, transpiration rate, intercellular CO concentration, and photosynthetic rate compared to wild type plants. The AtCBF3 lines limited the water status-mediated hypersensitive response by lowering leaf osmotic potential due to overexpression of AtCBF3 under chilling stress. Biochemical analyses followed by phenotypic studies demonstrated that AtCBF3 plants exhibited membrane stability and lush green appearance by limiting membrane ions leakage and malondialdehyde contents and by accumulating more proline, soluble sugars, chlorophyll contents, carotenoid contents, and antioxidant enzymes relative to wild type plants. Hence, with a several lines of evidence, these findings support that tomato transgenic plants overexpressing Arabidopsis CBF3 show enhanced chilling tolerance.

Increased Drought and Salinity Tolerance in Citrus aurantifolia (Mexican Lemon) Plants Overexpressing Arabidopsis CBF3 Gene

“…For example, potato plants ectopically expressing AtCBF3 exhibit enhanced tolerance to high-temperature stress (Dou et al 2015). Tomato plants overexpressing AtCBF3 gene controlled by a stress inducible promoter shown enhanced chilling tolerance (Shah et al 2017) and the ectopic expression of AtCBF3 confers tolerance to drought in red sage (Wei et al 2016) Citrus trees are characterized by high water demand and acute sensitivity to salinity. Several studies have reported increased stress tolerance in transgenic lines of citrus species, including the expression of betaine aldehyde dehydrogenase from Atriplex hortensis in trifoliate orange (Fu et al 2011), the expression of yeast HAL2 in Carrizo citrange (Cervera et al 2000;Ali et al 2012), the expression of the glyoxylases genes BjGlyI and PgGlyII in Carrizo citrange (Álvarez-Gerding et al 2015a), and the expression of CBF3 from Arabidopsis in Citrus macrophylla (Álvarez-Gerding et al 2015b).…”

MrERF039 transcription factor plays an active role in the cold response of Medicago ruthenica as a sugar molecular switch

“…When plants are exposed to cold environmental conditions, CRT binding factor (CBF) genes are rapidly induced to express and then activate the downstream target cold‐regulated ( COR ) genes or CBF‐regulated genes (Shi et al, 2017, 2018; Song et al, 2021; Tang et al, 2020). AtCBF1 to AtCBF3 transcription factors bind to DRE cis‐elements and induce COR genes expression (Maruyama et al, 2004; Shah et al, 2017; Vogel et al, 2005). AtDREB1A overexpressing Arabidopsis ( Arabidopsis thaliana ) exhibited a freezing tolerance phenotype (Gilmour et al, 2000), in which increased levels of proline, sucrose, and raffinose were also detected (Gilmour et al, 2004).…”

“…As the main intracellular osmoregulatory substance, soluble sugars can reduce the cell water density to maintain cell water, decrease the cytoplasmic freezing point to resist the damage caused by low temperature to plant cells, and act as scavengers of reactive oxygen species to improve the cell membrane system stability (Bohnert & Sheveleva, 1998). Although there is a strong correlation between sugars and frost or cold resistance in plants, the sugars associated with freezing tolerance vary among plants (Shah et al, 2017; Yu et al, 2015). The treatment of rice seedlings with fructose or glucose before low‐temperature treatment can improve their cold resistance.…”