Constitutive overexpression of rice metallothionein-like gene OsMT-3a enhances growth and tolerance of Arabidopsis plants to a combination of various abiotic stresses

Metallothioneins (MT) are primarily involved in metal chelation. Recent studies have shown that MT proteins are also involved in the responses of plants to various environmental stresses. The rice metallothionein-like gene OsMT-3a is upregulated by salinity and various abiotic stressors. A DNA const...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of plant research 2020-05, Vol.133 (3), p.429-440
Main Authors: Mekawy, Ahmad Mohammad M., Assaha, Dekoum V. M., Ueda, Akihiro
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Abiotic stress
Antioxidants
Arabidopsis
Ascorbic acid
Biomedical and Life Sciences
Cadmium
Cadmium chloride
Catalase
Chelation
Deoxyribonucleic acid
DNA
Drought resistance
Environmental stress
Heavy metals
Hydrogen peroxide
L-Ascorbate peroxidase
Life Sciences
Metallothionein
Metallothioneins
Nucleotide sequence
Peroxidase
Plant Biochemistry
Plant Ecology
Plant Physiology
Plant Sciences
Plants (botany)
Regular Paper – Physiology/Biochemistry/Molecular and Cellular Biology
Rice
Salinity
Salinity effects
Salinity tolerance
Shoots
Sodium chloride
Stresses
Transgenic plants
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Metallothioneins (MT) are primarily involved in metal chelation. Recent studies have shown that MT proteins are also involved in the responses of plants to various environmental stresses. The rice metallothionein-like gene OsMT-3a is upregulated by salinity and various abiotic stressors. A DNA construct containing the complete OsMT-3a coding sequence cloned downstream to the CaMV35S promoter was transformed into Arabidopsis and homozygous single-copy transgenic lines were produced. Compared to wild-type plants, transgenic plants showed substantially increased salinity tolerance (NaCl), drought tolerance (PEG), and heavy metal tolerance (CdCl 2 ) as individual stresses, as well as different combinations of these stresses. Relevantly, under unstressed control conditions, vegetative growth of transgenic plants was also improved. The shoot Na + concentration and hydrogen peroxide in transgenic plants were lower than those in wild-type plants. OsMT-3a -overexpressing Arabidopsis lines accumulated higher levels of Cd 2+ in both shoots and roots following CdCl 2 treatment. In the transgenic MT-3a lines, increased activity of two major antioxidant enzymes, catalase and ascorbate peroxidase, was observed. Thus, rice OsMT-3a is a valuable target gene for plant genetic improvement against multiple abiotic stresses.
ISSN:0918-9440
1618-0860
DOI:10.1007/s10265-020-01187-y