Ectopic expression of an autophagy-associated MdATG7b gene from apple alters growth and tolerance to nutrient stress in Arabidopsis thaliana

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• 作者：Ping Wang ; Xun Sun ; Na Wang ; Xin Jia…
• 关键词：Arabidopsis ; ATG7 ; Autophagy ; related genes ; Malus domestica ; Nitrogen and carbon starvation
• 刊名：Plant Cell, Tissue and Organ Culture (PCTOC)
• 出版年：2017
• 出版时间：January 2017
• 年：2017
• 卷：128
• 期：1
• 页码：9-23
• 全文大小：
• 刊物类别：Biomedical and Life Sciences
• 刊物主题：Plant Sciences; Plant Physiology; Plant Genetics & Genomics; Plant Pathology;
• 出版者：Springer Netherlands
• ISSN：1573-5044
• 卷排序：128

文摘

Plants are often subjected to unfavorable growing conditions, such as a limited supply of nutrients. Macroautophagy (autophagy) is an intracellular recycling process that targets unwanted proteins or damaged organelles, thus providing the nitrogen and carbon needed for survival and new plant growth during different phases of development and nutrient deprivation. During the formation of autophagosomes, AuTophaGy-related protein 7 (ATG7) is involved in both the ATG8 and ATG12 conjugation pathways. We isolated two ATG7 orthologs—MdATG7a and MdATG7b—from ‘Golden Delicious’ apple (Malus domestica Borkh.). Both were differentially responsive to leaf senescence, nitrogen depletion, and oxidative stresses at the transcriptional level. Heterologous expression of MdATG7b in Arabidopsis accelerated vegetative growth and facilitated the transition into reproductive phase, while also increasing the number of lateral branches, alleviating the negative effects of salt stress on seed germination and conferring tolerance to nitrogen- and carbon starvation. These results suggest that, as one of the important autophagy-related genes, MdATG7b enhances plant tolerance to nitrogen and carbon limitations, and it might be used as an important candidate for breeding crops with improved tolerance to nutrient-starvation stress.