Abstract
Drought stress has negative effects on crop growth and production.Characterization of tran-scription factors that regulate the expression of drought-responsive genes is critical for under-standing the transcriptional regulatory networks in response to drought,which facilitates the im-provement of crop drought tolerance.Here,we identified an Alfin-like(AL)family gene ZmAL14 that negatively regulates drought resistance.Overexpression of ZmAL14 exhibits susceptibility to drought while mutation of ZmAL14 enhances drought resistance.An abscisic acid(ABA)-activated protein kinase ZmSnRK2.2 interacts and phosphorylates ZmAL14 at T38 residue.Knockout of ZmSnRK2.2 gene decreases drought resistance of maize.A dehydration-induced Rho-like small guanosine triphosphatase gene ZmROP8 is di-rectly targeted and repressed by ZmAL14.Phos-phorylation of ZmAL14 by ZmSnRK2.2 prevents its binding to the ZmROP8 promoter,thereby re-leasing the repression of ZmROP8 transcription.Overexpression of ZmROP8 stimulates perox-idase activity and reduces hydrogen peroxide accumulation after drought treatment.Collec-tively,our study indicates that ZmAL14 is a neg-ative regulator of drought resistance,which can be phosphorylated by ZmSnRK2.2 through the ABA signaling pathway,thus preventing its sup-pression on ZmROP8 transcription during drought stress response.
基金项目
National Key Research and Development Program of China(2022YFF1001600)
ST12030-Major Projects(2030ZD0407101)
维普
万方数据