Jiahao Zhou, Jinzhu Qiao, Juan Wang, Ruidang Quan, Rongfeng Huang, Hua Qin

Front Plant Sci.; 2022 May 4;13:848891.  doi: 10.3389/fpls.2022.848891. eCollection 2022.

Abstract

Soil salinity is a major environmental stress that restricts the growth and yield of crops. Mining the key genes involved in the balance of rice salt tolerance and yield will be extremely important for us to cultivate salt-tolerance rice varieties. In this study, we report a WUSCHEL-related homeobox (WOX) gene, quiescent-center-specific homeobox (OsQHB), positively regulates yield-related traits and negatively regulates salt tolerance in rice. Mutation in OsQHB led to a decrease in plant height, tiller number, panicle length, grain length and grain width, and an increase in salt tolerance. Transcriptome and qPCR analysis showed that reactive oxygen species (ROS) scavenging-related genes were regulated by OsQHB. Moreover, the osqhb mutants have higher ROS-scavenging enzymes activities and lower accumulation of ROS and malondialdehyde (MDA) under salt stress. Thus, our findings provide new insights into the role of rice WOX gene family in rice development and salt tolerance, and suggest that OsQHB is a valuable target for improving rice production in environments characterized by salt stress.

See: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35599895/

Figure 4: Expression of OsQHB under stress and hormone treatments. (A) Distribution of major stress-related cis-elements in the promoter region of OsQHB. (B–E) GUS staining of 3-d-old transgenic lines contained OsQHBp-GUS treated with 100 mM NaCl (B), 10% PEG6000 (C), 10 μL/L Ethylene (D), or 1 μm ABA (E) treatment. Bar = 100 μm.