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Ectopic overexpression of TaHsfA5 promotes thermomorphogenesis in Arabidopsis thaliana and thermotolerance in Oryza sativa

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Abstract

Heat stress transcription factors (Hsfs) play an important role in regulating the heat stress response in plants. Among the Hsf family members, the group A members act upstream in initiating the response upon sensing heat stress and thus, impart thermotolerance to the plants. In the present study, wheat HsfA5 (TaHsfA5) was found to be one of the Hsfs, which was upregulated both in heat stress and during the recovery period after the stress. TaHsfA5 was found to interact with TaHsfA3 and TaHsfA4, both of which are known to positively regulate the heat stress-responsive genes. Apart from these, TaHsfA5 also interacted with TaHSBP2 protein, whose role has been implicated in attenuating the heat stress response. Further, its heterologous overexpression in Arabidopsis and Oryza sativa promoted thermotolerance in these plants. This indicated that TaHsfA5 positively regulated the heat stress response. Interestingly, the TaHsfA5 overexpression Arabidopsis plants when grown at warm temperatures showed  a hyper-thermomorphogenic response in comparison to the wild-type plants. This was found to be consistent with the higher expression of PIF4 and its target auxin-responsive genes in these transgenics in contrast to the wild-type plants. Thus, these results suggest the involvement of TaHsfA5 both in the heat stress response as well as in the thermomorphogenic response in plants.

Key message

TaHsfA5 is a unique Hsf, whose ectopic overexpression promotes thermomorphogenesis and tolerance against warm temperature stress in Arabidopsis, and thermotolerance against high temperature in Oryza sativa.

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All data supporting the findings of this study are available within the paper and its supplementary Information.

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Funding

HS and AS are thankful to the University Grant Commission (UGC) for the research fellowship. This work has been supported by a grant from the JC Bose fellowship award, Science and Engineering Research Board, Government of India, for research support.

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  1. Harsha Samtani and Aishwarye Sharma have contributed equally.

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  1. Department of Plant Molecular Biology, University of Delhi South Campus, Benito Juarez Road, New Delhi, 110021, India

    Harsha Samtani, Aishwarye Sharma & Paramjit Khurana

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PK conceived the idea, concept of the research work, and provided all the facilities for the experiments. HS and AS performed the experiments and wrote the manuscript. All authors have read and agreed to the submitted version of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Paramjit Khurana.

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(a) an article note shall be added: “The original version of this article was revised: Figure 5 was a duplicate of Figure 4.

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Samtani, H., Sharma, A. & Khurana, P. Ectopic overexpression of TaHsfA5 promotes thermomorphogenesis in Arabidopsis thaliana and thermotolerance in Oryza sativa. Plant Mol Biol 112, 225–243 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11103-023-01355-3

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