Regulation of Drought and Salt Tolerance by OsSKL2 and OsASR1 in Rice

Abstract

Abiotic stresses such as salinity and drought greatly impact the growth and production of crops worldwide. Here, a shikimate kinase-like 2 (SKL2) gene was cloned from rice and characterized for its regulatory function in salinity and drought tolerance. OsSKL2 was localized in the chloroplast, and its transcripts were significantly induced by drought and salinity stress as well as H2O2 and abscisic acid (ABA) treatment. Meanwhile, overexpression of OsSKL2 in rice increased tolerance to salinity, drought and oxidative stress by increasing antioxidant enzyme activity, and reducing levels of H2O2, malondialdehyde, and relative electrolyte leakage. In contrast, RNAi-induced suppression of OsSKL2 increased sensitivity to stress treatment. Interestingly, overexpression of OsSKL2 also increased sensitivity to exogenous ABA, with an increase in reactive oxygen species (ROS) accumulation. Moreover, OsSKL2 was found to physically interact with OsASR1, a well-known chaperone-like protein, which also exhibited positive roles in salt and drought tolerance. A reduction in ROS production was also observed in leaves of Nicotiana benthamiana showing transient co-expression of OsSKL2 with OsASR1. Taken together, these findings suggest that OsSKL2 together with OsASR1 act as important regulatory factors that confer salt and drought tolerance in rice via ROS scavenging.

Transcriptome Analysis Reveals Key Genes Involved in the Response of Pyrus betuleafolia to Drought and High-Temperature Stress

“…These stress responses are all based on regulation by corresponding genes. Such genes have been widely studied in model plants and mainly crops, including Arabidopsis, tomato, rice, maize, and wheat [ 25 , 26 , 27 , 28 , 29 , 30 , 31 , 32 ]. However, the corresponding pear genes in responding to drought or high temperature remain unclear.…”

The Emerging Role of Non-Coding RNAs (ncRNAs) in Plant Growth, Development, and Stress Response Signaling

“…Limited evidence is available on ncRNAs associated with the regulation of salt stress in plants [177][178][179][180][181][182][183][184][185][186][187][188][189][190], as listed in Table 1. Nearly 75 conserved miRNAs were identified from the control and NaCl-treated salt-tolerant rice varieties [180].…”

“…Root development TAS3-siRNA (ARFs) Marin et al [84] TAS3-siRNA (leafbladeless1) Gautam et al [85] Leaf development TAS3-siRNA (ARF3) Chitwoodet al [103] TAS3-siRNA Schwab et al [104] TAS3-siRNA (leafbladeless1) Dotto et al [105] Seed, endosperm, nutrient development maternal p4-siRNAs Lu et al [130] Yuan et al [131] Drought stress Dehydration induced siRNAs Jung et al [161] Yao et al [162] Salt stress OsSIDP301 (stress-induced DUF1644 protein) Ge et al [182] Response to ABA and Salt 1 Ren et al [183] OsSKL2 and OsASR Jiang et al [184] NATs of SRO5 and P5CDH Borsani et al [185] Flooding/hypoxia hypoxia-induced tasiRNA Moldovan et al [194] Heat stress HEAT-INDUCED TAS1 TARGET1 Li et al [207] Phased siRNA Pokhrel et al [208] Cold stress cold-induced tasiRNA Kume et al [209] Table 1. Cont.…”

Physiological and molecular implications of multiple abiotic stresses on yield and quality of rice

“…Shikimate pathway is known to be activated under abiotic stress conditions, such as drought and salinity, resulting in the accumulation of high levels of aromatic amino acids and related secondary metabolites ( Francini et al., 2019 ). Overexpression of OsSKL2 in rice increased tolerance to salinity, drought and oxidative stress by increasing antioxidant enzyme activity, and reducing levels of H 2 O 2 , malondialdehyde, and relative electrolyte leakage ( Jiang et al., 2022 ).…”