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Published on: March 30, 2018
Phytochrome interacting factor ZmPIF6 simultaneously enhances chilling tolerance and grain size in rice
Qian Li1, Yingxian Hou1, Qingwen Wang1
1Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Crop Genomics and Molecular Breeding/Key Laboratory of Plant Functional Genomics of the Ministry of Education/ Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Crop Genetics and Physiology, Yangzhou University, Yangzhou, 225009, China; Jiangsu Co-Innovation Center for Modern Production Technology of Grain Crops, Joint International Research Laboratory of Agriculture and Agri-Product Safety of the Ministry of Education, Yangzhou University, Yangzhou, 225009, China.
Abstract:
Chilling is a prevalent type of abiotic stress that adversely affects agricultural productivity worldwide. Phytochrome interacting factors (PIFs) are a group of transcription factor that are crucial for plant abiotic stress response. Our research reveals that the maize PIF family gene ZmPIF6 is responsive to chilling stress, which mitigates the negative impacts of chilling through reducing reactive oxygen species content and enhancing cell membrane stability at the physiological and biochemical levels. We also found that the ZmPIF6 overexpression lines showed a significant increase in grain size, encompassing both length and width, which mainly due to the increase in cell size. In addition, digital gene expression results suggested that ZmPIF6 regulates the expression of cold-related and grain size-related genes in rice. In light of these findings, ZmPIF6 has a hopeful prospect as a candidate gene of chilling tolerance and crop productivity in the transgenic breeding.
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