Protein phosphorylation/dephosphorylation are major signaling events induced by osmotic stress in higher plants. Here, we showed that a SNF1-related protein kinase 2 (SnRK2), SRK2C, is an osmotic-stress-activated protein kinase in Arabidopsis thaliana that can significantly impact drought tolerance of Arabidopsis plants. Knockout mutants of SRK2C exhibited drought hypersensitivity in their root...

Forward genetic screening of mutants using firefly luciferase (LUC) reporter gene became a standard practice in plant research. Such screenings frequently identified alleles of CPL1 (Carboxyl-terminal Phosphatase-Like 1) regardless of promoters or pathways studied. Expression of the corresponding endogenous genes often shows the minimal difference between wild type and cpl1. Here we show that t...

Rubber trees are economically important tropical tree species and the major source of natural rubber, which is an essential industrial material. This tropical perennial tree is susceptible to cold stress and other abiotic stresses, especially in the marginal northern tropics. Recent years, the genome sequencing and RNA-seq projects produced huge amount of sequence data, which greatly facilitate...

HDA6 is a RPD3-like histone deacetylase. In Arabidopsis, it mediates transgene and some endogenous target transcriptional gene silencing (TGS) via histone deacetylation and DNA methylation. Here, we characterized two hda6 mutant alleles that were recovered as second-site suppressors of the DNA demethylation mutant ros1-1. Although both alleles derepressed 35S::NPTII and RD29A::LUC in the ros1-1...

Heptahelical protein 1 (HHP1) is a negative regulator in abscisic acid (ABA) and osmotic signalling in Arabidopsis. The physiological role of HHP1 was further investigated in this study using transgenic and knock-out plants. In HHP1::GUS transgenic mutants, GUS activity was found to be mainly expressed in the roots, vasculature, stomata, hydathodes, adhesion zones, and connection sites between ...

Dolichols are long-chain unsaturated polyisoprenoids with multiple cellular functions, such as serving as lipid carriers of sugars used for protein glycosylation, which affects protein trafficking in the endoplasmic reticulum. The biological functions of dolichols in plants are largely unknown. We isolated an Arabidopsis thaliana mutant, lew1 (for leaf wilting1), that showed a leaf-wilting phen...

To study the molecular mechanism of abscisic acid (ABA) regulation of root development, we screened the root growth of Arabidopsis mutants for sensitivity to ABA. ABA overly-sensitive 5 (ABO5/At1g51965) was identified, and was determined to encode a pentatricopeptide repeat protein required for cis-splicing of mitochondrial nad2 intron 3 (nad2 is one subunit in complex I). Under constant light ...

Cysteine proteinases (thiol) carry out diverse and critical functions in plants through their ability to hydrolyze peptide bonds target proteins. Here, we cloned a cysteine proteinase gene designated VaCP17 from highly cold-resistant wild Vitis amurensis accession ‘Shuangyou’, then its potential function cold resistance was investigated. The results showed that the CDS of is 1404 bp, encoding 4...

Abstract Background Chickpea ( Cicer arietinum L.) is the second most widely grown pulse and drought (limiting water) one of major constraints leading to about 40–50% yield losses annually. Dehydration responsive element binding proteins (DREBs) are important plant transcription factors that regulate expression many stress-inducible genes play a critical role in improving abiotic stress toleran...