N-terminal domains of AhAREB1 protein are necessary for transcriptional characteristics and negative regulation of the AhNCED1 gene

A transcription factor gene Arachis hypogaea abscisic acid (ABA) responsive element binding protein 1 (AhAREB1) has been isolated from peanut previously. Here, the function of different domains from AhAREB1 was investigated using construct series containing AhAREB1 full-length and truncated fragments to transform peanut hairy roots and pAhNCED1 (promoter of Arachis hypogaea 9-cis-epoxycarotenoid dioxygenase 1) GUS/Col Arabidopsis thaliana, respectively. The results of real-time quantitative PCR, transient expression, and chromosome immunoprecipitation (ChIP) assay all showed that AhAREB1 negatively regulated the expression of the AhNCED1 gene. β-Glucuronidase (GUS) staining shows that AhAREB1 and the AhAREB1 gene truncated fragment A1 may be bound to ABA responsive element motifs in the promoter region of AhNCED1 and involved in the negative regulation of the upstream AhNCED1 gene promoter, reflected by the inhibited expression of the AhNCED1 promoter reporter gene and significantly reduced GUS activity in transgenic A. thaliana plants. Furthermore, only the full variant of AhAREB1 and a fragment without a C1 domain had repression activity on the AhNCED1 promoter. On the contrary, the AhAREB1 gene truncated fragments A2 and A3 variant without a C2 domain had no such repression activity. Moreover, the negative regulation of AhNCED1 was detected only when the C2 domain was present suggesting that the C2 domain was required for AhAREB1 activity. Subcellular localization analysis shows that the deletion of conserved domains C1, C2, C3 had no effects on the nuclear localization of AhAREB1. In addition, ChIP analysis indicates that the deletion of domains C1 and C3 significantly affected the binding of the AhAREB1 transcription factor to the AhNCED1 promoter. Taken together, the results indicate that the different N-terminal domains of the AhAREB1 protein, which played different roles in the negative regulations of AhNCED1, were necessary for AhNCED1 transcription.