The rice transcription factors OsICE confer enhanced cold tolerance in transgenic Arabidopsis

Abstract

Cold stress is one of the major constraints for crop yield. Plants have in turn evolved highly sophisticated mechanisms involving altered physiologic and biochemical processes to cope with the cold stress. Previous studies have revealed that the INDUCER OF CBF EXPRESSION 1 (ICE1), a basic helix-loop-helix (bHLH) transcription factor, directly binds and activates the expression of C-Repeat Binding Factor/ Dehydration-Responsive-Element-Binding protein (CBF/DREB1) to regulate the cold-response pathway in Arabidopsis thaliana. However, the function of AtICE1 orthologues in rice is largely unknown. Here we identified that OsICE1 and OsICE2 in rice shared highly conserved amino acid sequence with AtICE1 in Arabidopsis. Overexpression of OsICE1 and OsICE2 in Arabidopsis significantly enhanced the cold tolerance of Arabidopsis seedlings and improved the expression of cold-response genes. Furthermore, we showed that both OsICE1 and OsICE2 physically interact with OsMYBS3, a single DNA-binding repeat MYB transcription factor that is essential for cold adaptation in rice, suggesting that OsICE1/OsICE2 and OsMYBS3 probably act through specific signal transduction mechanisms to coordinate cold tolerance in rice. These results demonstrated that the 2 OsICEs are orthologues of AtICE1 and play positive regulators in activation of cold-response genes to regulate the cold tolerance.

Genome-wide analysis of basic helix-loop-helix (bHLH) transcription factors in papaya (Carica papaya L.)

“…In subfamily Ⅲb, OsbHLH001(OsICE2), OsbHLH002 (OsICE1), CpbHLH027, CpbHLH062, AtbHLH116 (ICE1) and AtbHLH33 (ICE2) were clustered within one clade. In previous studies, AtbHLH116(ICE1) and AtbHLH33(ICE2) and corresponding orthologs (OsbHLH001/OsICE2, OsbHLH002/OsICE1) have been reported to function in the stress of chilling[41][42][43][44][45]. And we also found transcripts of CpbHLH027 and CpbHLH062 were increased under chilling stress in this study, implyingCpbHLH027 and CpbHLH062 involved in the process of chilling stress in papaya.…”

“…OsbHLH001 (OsICE2) and OsbHLH002 (OsICE1) have been reported function in chilling stress in Arabidopsis and rice [41][42][43][44][45]. And the transcripts of CpbHLH027, CpbHLH062 were increased under chilling stress in this study, implying CpbHLH027 and CpbHLH062 may be also involved in the process of chilling stress.…”

“…1), which can be induced by Nacl, ABA and cold stresses, playing an important role in the cold-responsive signaling pathway via an ABA-independent pathway [41]. There are two orthologues of bHLH027 in rice, one ortholog is OsICE2/OsbHLH001, is induced by salt stress, and its overexpression can enhanced the tolerance to freezing and salt stress [44,45]. OsICE1/OsbHLH002 is another ortholog in rice, which is induced by chilling stress.…”

OsTMF attenuates cold tolerance by affecting cell wall properties in rice

“…Considering the important roles of the CBF/DREB signaling pathway in cold response, we also examined the expression of genes involved in the CBF/DREB pathway (including OsDREB1A/B/C , OsICE2 and MYBS3 ; Dubouzet et al , 2003; Su et al , 2010; Deng et al , 2017) in OsTMF‐OE and ostmf‐1 plants during cold stress treatment. Although some of these genes showed a small difference in expression levels between OsTMF‐OE and ZH11 at several time points of cold stress treatment, they were not correspondingly influenced in the ostmf‐1 plants compared with DJ (Fig.…”

Insights into the regulation of C‐repeat binding factors in plant cold signaling

“…The function of ICE1 is conserved in many plant species, and the heterogeneous expression of the rice, maize, or tomato ICE1 orthologs in Arabidopsis enhanced plant freezing tolerance (Nosenko et al ; Deng et al ; Lu et al ). ICE2, a paralog of ICE1, is also involved in regulating CBF expression and freezing tolerance (Fursova et al ).…”