Scientific Reports (Aug 2017)

GBF3 transcription factor imparts drought tolerance in Arabidopsis thaliana

  • Venkategowda Ramegowda,
  • Upinder Singh Gill,
  • Palaiyur Nanjappan Sivalingam,
  • Aarti Gupta,
  • Chirag Gupta,
  • Geetha Govind,
  • Karaba N. Nataraja,
  • Andy Pereira,
  • Makarla Udayakumar,
  • Kirankumar S. Mysore,
  • Muthappa Senthil-Kumar

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-09542-1
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 7, no. 1
pp. 1 – 13

Abstract

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Abstract Drought transcriptome analysis of finger millet (Eleusine coracana) by cDNA subtraction identified drought responsive genes that have a potential role in drought tolerance. Through virus-induced gene silencing (VIGS) in a related crop species, maize (Zea mays), several genes, including a G-BOX BINDING FACTOR 3 (GBF3) were identified as candidate drought stress response genes and the role of GBF3 in drought tolerance was studied in Arabidopsis thaliana. Overexpression of both EcGBF3 and AtGBF3 in A. thaliana resulted in improved tolerance to osmotic stress, salinity and drought stress in addition to conferring insensitivity to ABA. Conversely, loss of function of this gene increased the sensitivity of A. thaliana plants to drought stress. EcGBF3 transgenic A. thaliana results also suggest that drought tolerance of sensitive plants can be improved by transferring genes from far related crops like finger millet. Our results demonstrate the role of GBF3 in imparting drought tolerance in A. thaliana and indicate the conserved role of this gene in drought and other abiotic stress tolerance in several plant species.