ERF49 mediates brassinosteroid regulation of heat stress tolerance in Arabidopsis thaliana

作者：Xia Chen, Huidan Xue, Liping Zhu, Huiqin Wang, Hao Long, Jun Zhao, Funing Meng, Yunfei Liu, Ye Yuan, Xiaomin Luo, Zhi Liu, Guanghui Xiao, Shengwei Zhu · 发表于：BMC Biology · 年份：2022 · DOI：10.1186/s12915-022-01455-4 · 被引用次数：60 · 研究领域：Plant Molecular Biology Research、Heat shock proteins research、Plant Stress Responses and Tolerance

BACKGROUND: Heat stress is a major abiotic stress affecting the growth and development of plants, including crop species. Plants have evolved various adaptive strategies to help them survive heat stress, including maintaining membrane stability, encoding heat shock proteins (HSPs) and ROS-scavenging enzymes, and inducing molecular chaperone signaling. Brassinosteroids (BRs) are phytohormones that regulate various aspects of plant development, which have been implicated also in plant responses to heat stress, and resistance to heat in Arabidopsis thaliana is enhanced by adding exogenous BR. Brassinazole resistant 1 (BZR1), a transcription factor and positive regulator of BR signal, controls plant growth and development by directly regulating downstream target genes. However, the molecular mechanism at the basis of BR-mediated heat stress response is poorly understood. Here, we report the identification of a new factor critical for BR-regulated heat stress tolerance. RESULTS: We identified ERF49 in a genetic screen for proteins required for BR-regulated gene expression. We found that ERF49 is the direct target gene of BZR1 and that overexpressing ERF49 enhanced sensitivity of transgenic plants to heat stress. The transcription levels of heat shock factor HSFA2, heat stress-inducible gene DREB2A, and three heat shock protein (HSP) were significantly reduced under heat stress in ERF49-overexpressed transgenic plants. Transcriptional activity analysis in protoplast revealed that B...