Engineering Arabidopsis for improved yield and nutritional quality through heterologous expression of maize ZmERF118...

As one of the world's three major staple crops, maize is indispensable, particularly because of the critical role its essential amino acids play in both human and livestock nutrition. This study investigated the function of ZmERF118 in seed amino acid accumulation in Columbia wild-type (Col-0 WT) Arabidopsis plants. Subcellular localization experiments in tobacco leaves revealed that ZmERF118 acts as a transcription factor localized in the plant nucleus and encodes a 25.6 kDa protein. Compared with Col-0 WT Arabidopsis, overexpression of this gene promoted seedling growth and increased seed size but inhibited embryo development in the seeds. Moreover, this gene positively regulated amino acid content in Arabidopsis seeds, with significantly elevated levels of all amino acids, except tryptophan, compared with the WT. In addition, the seed starch content was significantly lower than that of WT. In summary, overexpression of the ZmERF118 positively regulated amino acid content and negatively regulated starch content in Arabidopsis seeds.