Isolation of a low-sulfur tolerance gene from Eichhornia crassipes using a functional gene-mining approach

Genes enhancing nutrient utilization efficiency are needed for crop improvement. Here, we report the isolation of a gene conferring low-sulfur tolerance from water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes) using a functional gene-mining method. In doing this, an entry cDNA library was constructed from the roots of nutrient-starved water hyacinth using recombination cloning and subsequently shuttled into the plant transformation- and expression-ready vector. The plant transformation- and expression-ready library was transferred into Arabidopsis and a seed library of 50,000 independent transgenic lines was generated. Three transgenic lines with enhanced low-sulfur tolerance were isolated from the seed library. One of the transgenic lines, shl143-1, with improved tolerance to sulfate deficiency and an improved root system was further analyzed. It was found that a water hyacinth jacalin-related lectin gene (EcJRL-1) was overexpressed in shl143-1. Recapitulation analysis confirmed that the overexpression of the EcJRL-1 cDNA caused the phenotype. Therefore, this study demonstrates that a jacalin-related lectin is involved in root elongation under sulfur-deficient conditions.