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Salicylic acid inhibits gibberellin-induced alpha-amylase expression and seed germination via a pathway involving an abscisic-acid-inducible WRKY gene

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Abstract

It is well known that abscisic acid (ABA) antagonizes gibberellin (GA)-promoted seed germination. Recent circumstantial evidence suggests that salicylic acid (SA) also inhibits seed germination in maize and Arabidopsis. Our study shows that SA blocks barley seed germination in a dosage dependent manner. As an initial effort to addressing the mechanism controlling the crosstalk of SA, GA and ABA signaling in barley, we studied the regulation of α-amylases by SA and a WRKY gene whose expression is modulated by these hormones. Assays of α-amylase activity reveal that GA-induced α-amylase production in aleurone cells is inhibited by bioactive SA, but not its analogs, 3-hydroxybenzoic acid and 4-hydroxybenzoic acid. This inhibitory effect is unlikely due to repressing α-amylase secretion or inhibiting α-amylase enzyme activities. Northern blot analyses indicate that SA suppresses GA-induced expression of a barley low pI α-amylase gene (Amy32b). Because our previous data indicate that ABA-inducible and GA-suppressible WRKY genes inhibit the expression of α-amylase genes in rice, we studied the steady state mRNA levels of a barley WRKY gene, HvWRKY38. The expression of HvWRKY38 in barley aleurone cells is down-regulated by GA, but up-regulated by SA and ABA. However, the regulation of HvWRKY38 by SA appears to be different from that of ABA in term of the kinetics and levels of induction. Over-expression of HvWRKY38 in aleurone cells by particle bombardment blocks GA induction of the Amy32b promoter reporter construct (Amy32b-GUS). Therefore, HvWRKY38 might serve as a converging node of SA and ABA signal pathways involved in suppressing GA-induced seed germination.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to express our gratitude to people in the Shen laboratory for their contributions to the improvement of this paper. The project described was supported in part by NIH Grant Number 2 P20 RR016463 from the INBRE Program of the National Center for Research Resources to the state of Nevada.

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  1. Zhen Xie

    Present address: FAS Center for Systems Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 02138, USA

  2. Zhong-Lin Zhang

    Present address: Department of Biology, Duke University, Durham, NC, 27708-1000, USA

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biological Sciences, University of Nevada, M/S 4004, 4505 Maryland Parkway, Las Vegas, NV, 89154, USA

    Zhen Xie, Zhong-Lin Zhang, Shane Hanzlik, Everett Cook & Qingxi J. Shen

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  1. Zhen Xie
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  2. Zhong-Lin Zhang
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Correspondence to Qingxi J. Shen.

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Zhen Xie and Zhong-Lin Zhang contributed equally to this work.

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Xie, Z., Zhang, ZL., Hanzlik, S. et al. Salicylic acid inhibits gibberellin-induced alpha-amylase expression and seed germination via a pathway involving an abscisic-acid-inducible WRKY gene. Plant Mol Biol 64, 293–303 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11103-007-9152-0

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