Study on the expression of stressresponsive genes in transgenic arabidopsis thaliana carrying GMNAC20

Abstract

Drought stress is one of the most serious environmental factors that poses a detrimental impact on worldwide agronomic production. The plant-specific NAC transcription factors have been previously reported to function in plant growth, development and adaptation to abiotic stresses in plant. To generally investigate the function of GmNAC20 in plant drought adaptations, transgenic Arabidopsis overexpression of GmNAC20 was successfully generated and functionally analyzed. In this study, we further identified transcriptional activities of the stress-inducible GmNAC20 in regulation of plant tolerance to drought using homologous and single copied transgenic Arabidopsis via drought stress assay and qRT-PCR. Overexpression of GmNAC20 in Arabidopsis phenotypically enhanced drought resistance. Furthermore, transcriptional analysis emphasized that up-expression of GmNAC20 modified transcript profile of a number of well-known NAC-mediated drought-responsive genes including LEA14, ERD11, RD29a, RD29b, RAB18 to facilitate plant defense under water deficit. Taken all together, those results demonstrated that GmNAC20 involved in drought adaptive response and could be used as a remarkable candidate for enhanced crop production via genetic engineering. Keywords: Arabidopsis thaliana, NAC transcription factor, GmNAC20, stress-responsive gene, drought stress