Increasing Nitric Oxide Content in Arabidopsis thaliana by Expressing Rat Neuronal Nitric Oxide Synthase Resulted in Enhanced Stress Tolerance

Shi, Hai-Tao; Li, Rong-Jun; Cai, Wei; Liu, Wen; Wang, Zhaolun; Lu, Ying-Tang

Increasing Nitric Oxide Content in Arabidopsis thaliana by Expressing Rat Neuronal Nitric Oxide Synthase Resulted in Enhanced Stress Tolerance

2012

Nitric oxide (NO) plays essential roles in many physiological and developmental processes in plants, including biotic and abiotic stresses, which have adverse effects on agricultural production. However, due to the lack of findings regarding nitric oxide synthase (NOS), many difficulties arise in investigating the physiological roles of NO in vivo and thus its utilization for genetic engineering. Here, to explore the possibility of manipulating the endogenous NO level, rat neuronal NOS (nNOS) was expressed in Arabidopsis thaliana. The 35S::nNOS plants showed higher NOS activity and accumulation of NO using the fluorescent probe 3-amino, 4-aminomethyl-2', 7'-difluorescein, diacetate (DAF-FM DA) assay and the hemoglobin assay. Compared with the wild type, the 35S::nNOS plants displayed improved salt and drought tolerance, which was further confirmed by changes in physiological parameters including reduced water loss rate, reduced stomatal aperture, and altered proline and malondialdehyde content. Quantitative real-time PCR analyses revealed that the expression of several stress-regulated genes was up-regulated in the transgenic lines. Furthermore, the transgenic lines also showed enhanced disease resistance against Pseudomonas syringae pv. tomato (Pst) DC3000 by activating the expression of defense-related genes. In addition, we found that the 35S::nNOS lines flowered late by regulating the expression of CO, FLC and LFY genes. Together, these results demonstrated that it is a useful strategy to exploit the roles of plant NO in various processes by the expression of rat nNOS. The approach may also be useful for genetic engineering of crops with increased environmental adaptations.

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AGROVOC Keywords

abiotic stress analysis animals arabidopsis arabidopsis thaliana biosynthesis disease resistance disease resistance drought tolerance enzyme activity flowering flowers gene expression gene expression regulation gene expression regulation gene transfer genes genetic engineering genetic engineering genetics hemoglobin lipid peroxidation malondialdehyde metabolism nitric oxide nitric oxide pathogenicity pharmacology physiology plant plants polymerase chain reaction proline proline pseudomonas syringae rats rats salt tolerance sodium chloride stress transgenic plants

Bibliographic information

Published in

Plant & cell physiology

Volume 53 Issue 2 Pagination 344 - 357 ISSN 0032-0781

Publisher

Elsevier Ltd

Other Subjects

Stress tolerance; Bacterial diseases of plants; Genetically modified; Plant stomata; Nitric oxide synthase type i; Stomatal movement; Neurons; Pseudomonas syringae pv. tomato; Physiological; Droughts; Nitric oxide synthase

Language

English

Type

Journal Article; Text

In AGRIS since: 2024-02-27

Format: MODS

Data Provider

This bibliographic record has been provided by National Agricultural Library

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Links

DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/pcp/pcr181

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