The WRKY Transcription Factor Family in Model Plants and Crops

Transcriptomic analysis of Lycium ruthenicum Murr. during fruit ripening provides insight into structural and regulatory genes in the anthocyanin biosynthetic pathway

“…In addition to the TFs mentioned above, TFs such as WRKY, NAC, bZIP, and MADS have also been implicated in anthocyanin biosynthesis in plants [61][62][63][64]. In our study, several genes, including NAC, WRKY, bZIP, and MADS, were identified (S3 Table).…”

Phosphorus deficiency promotes the lateral root growth of Fraxinus mandshurica seedlings

“…In order to maintain P balance in plants, transcription factors play important roles in response to P deficiency through regulating a large number of genes involved in diverse metabolic pathways ( Valdés‐López and Hernández , ). The WRKY transcription factor is a member of one of the largest families of transcriptional regulators in plants and it is involved in the regulation of various plant processes, such as biotic and abiotic stresses, senescence, seed germination, and some other developmental processes ( Rushton et al., ; Chen et al., ). Until now, various WRKY s have been identified to be involved in the response to P deficiency, such as OsWRKY74, AtWRKY75, AtWRKY6, AtWRKY45 , and AtWRKY42 ( Devaiah et al., ; Chen et al., ; Dai et al., ).…”

Subtractive hybridization-assisted screening and characterization of genes involved in the rice-Magnaporthe oryzae interaction

“…By transient gain-of-function screening of the expression library, we have identified 32 unique candidate genes that are able to trigger cell death when overexpressed in N. benthamiana plants, implying that the phase change associated plant cell death may be a highly-regulated process. Consistent with this, many of the genes identified by the screening, including those encoding MYB- a Cell death was observed on N. benthamiana; b Chlorosis on barley leaves was induced by gene expression with or without subsequent infection by the blast fungus; c Chlorosis could be induced in absence of the fungal infection; "+++" indicates tissue collapse of the Agrobacteria-inoculated region; "++" and "+" indicate partial or sporadic cell death, respectively, observed on the lower surface of leaves related proteins (Xiong et al 2001), Zinc finger proteins (Xiong et al 2001;Li et al 2014) and WRKYs (Song et al 2010;Chujo et al 2013;Chen et al 2017), have been reported to be upregulated during pathogen infection of the rice plants. For instance, OsWRKY72 is a senescence-associated transcription factor and may mediate the ROS-induced cell death in rice plant (Zhou et al 2013).…”

“…Rice chitinase 11 is a PR protein strongly induced by pathogen infection, and overexpression of the protein in transgenic rice plants enhances the resistance against sheath blight disease (Grover 2012;Kumar et al 2018); whereas the PPIases, which mediate protein folding in the endoplasmic reticulum, are targeted by pathogens to subdue plant defenses (Kromina et al 2008;Fan et al 2018). In contrast, OsWRKY28 has been identified as a negative regulator of immunity and can enhance susceptibility to blast disease when overexpressed in transgenic plants (Chujo et al 2013;Chen et al 2017); likewise, overexpression of the Arabidopsis heat shock cognate 70 (HSC70), sharing over 90% of sequence identity with the candidate rice heat shock cognate protein 2 found in this study, disables resistance to virulent pathogen strains including Hyaloperonospora parasitica Noco2 and Pseudomonas syringae pv tomato DC3000 (Noël et al 2007). Interestingly, except for the leaf chlorosis caused by the expression of the five candidate proteins such as Myb-related protein 308 and Zinc finger protein 8, we did not observe prominent cell death akin to that on N. benthamiana following the transient expression of these genes in barley.…”