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Functional Plant Biology Functional Plant Biology Society
Plant function and evolutionary biology
RESEARCH ARTICLE

Heterologous expression of rice RNA-binding glycine-rich (RBG) gene OsRBGD3 in transgenic Arabidopsis thaliana confers cold stress tolerance

Sangram K. Lenka https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0121-2430 A E , Amit K. Singh A , Senthilkumar K. Muthusamy A B , Shuchi Smita A C , Viswanathan Chinnusamy D and Kailash C. Bansal A E F
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations

A ICAR-National Research Centre on Plant Biotechnology, Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi, 110012, India.

B ICAR-Central Tuber Crops Research Institute, Thiruvananthapuram, 695017, India.

C Department of Immunology, School of Medicine, University of Pittsburgh, PA 15261, USA.

D ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute, Division of Plant Physiology, New Delhi, 110012, India.

E TERI-Deakin NanoBiotechnology Centre, The Energy and Resources Institute, New Delhi, 110003, India.

F Corresponding author. Email: kailashbansal@hotmail.com

Functional Plant Biology 46(5) 482-491 https://doi.org/10.1071/FP18241
Submitted: 14 September 2018  Accepted: 23 January 2019   Published: 27 February 2019

Abstract

Imparting cold stress tolerance to crops is a major challenge in subtropical agriculture. New genes conferring cold tolerance needs to be identified and characterised for sustainable crop production in low-temperature stress affected areas. Here we report functional characterisation of OsRBGD3, classified previously as a class D glycine-rich RNA recognition motif (RRM) containing proteins from a drought-tolerant Indica rice cultivar N22. The gene was isolated by screening yeast one-hybrid library using the minimal promoter region of the OsMYB38 that is necessary for cold stress-responsive expression. OsRBGD3 exhibited cold, drought and salt stress inductive expression in a drought tolerant N22 rice cultivar as compared with susceptible variety IR64. OsRBGD3 was found to be localised to both nuclear and cytoplasmic subcellular destinations. Constitutive overexpression of the OsRBGD3 in transgenic Arabidopsis conferred tolerance to cold stress. ABA sensitivity was also observed in transgenic lines suggesting the regulatory role of this gene in the ABA signalling pathway. OsRBGD3 overexpression also attributed to significant root development and early flowering in transgenics. Hence, OsRBGD3 could be an important target for developing cold tolerant early flowering rice and other crops’ genotypes for increasing production in low temperature affected areas.

Additional keywords: cold tolerance, flowering, glycine-rich RRM proteins, OsRBGD3, root growth, Y1H.


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