Regulation of salt tolerance in the roots of Zea mays by L-histidine through transcriptome analysis

Abstract

Soil salinization is an important worldwide environmental problem and the main reason to reduce agricultural productivity. Recent findings suggested that histidine is a crucial residue that influences the ROS reduction and improves the plants’ tolerance to salt stress. Herein, we conducted experiments to understand the underlying regulatory effects of histidine on maize root system under salt stress (100 mM NaCl solution system). Several antioxidant enzymes were determined. The related expressed genes (DEGs) with its pathways were observed by Transcriptome technologies. The results of the present study confirmed that histidine can ameliorate the adverse effects of salt stress on maize root growth. When the maize roots exposed to 100 mM NaCl were treated with histidine, the accumulation of superoxide anion radicals, hydrogen peroxide, and malondialdehyde, and the content of nitrate nitrogen and ammonium nitrogen were significantly reduced; while the activities of superoxide dismutase, peroxidase, catalase, nitrate reductase, glutamine synthetase, and glutamate synthase were significantly increased. Transcriptome analysis revealed that a total of 454 (65 up-regulated and 389 down-regulated) and 348 (293 up-regulated and 55 down-regulated) DEGs were observed when the roots under salt stress were treated with histidine for 12 h and 24 h, respectively. The pathways analysis of those DEGs showed that a small number of down-regulated genes were enriched in phytohormone signaling and phenylpropanoid biosynthesis at 12 h after histidine treatment, and the DEGs involved in the phytohormone signaling, glycolysis, and nitrogen metabolism were significantly enriched at 24 h after treatment. These results of gene expression and enzyme activities suggested that histidine can improve the salt tolerance of maize roots by enriching some DEGs involved in plant hormone signal transduction, glycolysis, and nitrogen metabolism pathways.

DEAD-Box RNA Helicase Family in Physic Nut (Jatropha curcas L.): Structural Characterization and Response to Salinity

“…Another distinct cluster highlighted the biosynthesis of histidine, an amino acid crucial for plant growth, development, and responses to environmental factors, including salinity. A treatment with histidine in corn plants, when exposed to salinity, exhibited enhanced tolerance and increased activities of antioxidant enzymes after salt stress [ 86 ], while the induction of histidine biosynthesis enzymes in tomato leaves under heat and flooding stresses further underscored its importance [ 87 ].…”

Overexpression of GmWRKY172 enhances cadmium tolerance in plants and reduces cadmium accumulation in soybean seeds

“…RNA-seq has been utilized as a prospective method to investigate the intricate molecular pathways linked with a given phenotype ( Shen et al., 2020 ; Ji et al., 2022 ; Yan et al., 2022 ). Global differential gene expression profiling in the overexpressing soybean lines revealed that GmWRKY172 regulates multiple biological pathways.…”

Identification of genes associated with the silk gland size using multi‐omics in silkworm (Bombyx mori)

“…The linker sequences in reads, the sequences with 3‐terminal and sequence length <10, the sequences with N content >10% and the length of sequences <20 bp were eliminated from the original sequencing data using fastp version 0.19.5, and 7.0 GB of clean data with Q30 > 92.93% was obtained from each sample and it was used for transcript assembly and expression level analysis (Chen et al, 2018). The DEGs were determined at |log2 (fold change)| > 1 and p ‐adjust < 0.05 using DESeq2 version 1.26.0 (Ji et al, 2022; Love et al, 2014). The reference genome is located at the website http://metazoa.ensembl.org/Bombyx_mori/Info/Index, version: GCA_000151625.1.…”