Isolation And Function Analysis Of The ERF Transcription Factor Gene In Wheat

Plant growth and development are invariably influenced by various abiotic and biotic stresses, and those environmental stresses seriously limit the increase of yield and improvement of quality of crops. However, plants could sense and transduce the signals caused by stress to transcription factors through a series of phosphorization responses. The functional genes related to stress tolerance are then initiated; a series of physiochemical reactions are activated to alleviate the damage caused by abiotic stress to a certain degree. Extensive research suggests that plant AP2/EREBP superfamily transcription factors played important roles in response to environment stresses. Therefore, to study the ERF transcription factors contain important significance in understand the mechanism of plant response to environment stresses.A full lengh cDNA designated as TaERF4, TaERF5 was isolated from a wheat cDNA library (the State Key Laboratory for Biology of Plant Diseases and Pest Insects, Institute of plant Protection, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences) using the near-isogenetic line Taichung29*6/Yr5 seedlings challenged by incompatible yellow rust race CY32 through homology-based cloning method. The amino acid sequenced contains of TaERF4/5 contains a highly conserved AP2 domain, which shares quite high homology with members of ERF subfamily. The cluster analysis showed that TaERFL4/5 belong to ERF subfamily, thus TaERF4/5 are probably a new member of ERF subfamily genes. Semi-quantitative RT-PCR analysis revealed that the expression of TaERF5 was induced by ABA (abscisic acid), TaERF4, TaERF5 were induced by MeJa (methyl jasmonate), cold, salt and dehydration respectively. We studied the subcellular localization of TaERF4/5 using PDS 1000/He Gene System(Bio-Rad), results show that TaERF4/5 can localize into the nuclei. These results suggest that TaERF4/5 was AP2/EREBP transcription factor with basic characteristics, and it may be involved in process of plant response to both abiotic and biotic stresses. The experiment offered theoretical foundation to molecular breeding of wheat.