XIE Yameng, ZHAO Xiaolei, BAI Jinghua, SUN Liying, MA Zifei, LU Wenjing, XIAO Kai
NF-Y-type transcription factors play an important role in regulating plant growth and development and mediating plant resistance to abiotic stress. This study investigated the molecular characteristics, expression pattern in response to drought stress, and biological function in mediating plant drought tolerance of a transcription factor gene TaNF-YA1 belonging to the wheat NF-YA family. TaNF-YA1sequence was highly similar to TmNF-YA9 of Triticum monococcumin. Under drought treatment, the expression of TaNF-YA1 in roots and leaves increased continuously and peaked at 24 h after treatment, which remained stable until 48 h after treatment. In addition, the gene transcripts in roots and leaves decreased gradually when plants were recovered to normal condition after 48 h of drought treatment.Compared with the wild-type(WT) control, the growth vigor of the tobacco lines overexpressing sense TaNFYA1(Sen 1 and Sen 2) was enhanced under drought treatment, showing increasedplant size, fresh and dry weight of root. Moreover, these transgenic lines displayed enhancedability of photosynthetic carbon assimilationactivity of cellular antioxidant enzymes, and increased stomatal closure rate andwater holding capacity in the isolated leaves after drought stress. The expression levels of the antioxidant enzyme genes(NtSOD1.1, NtCAT2.2 and NtPOD4.1)and root development-associated genes(NtPIN1 and NtPIN4) were significantly increased in Sen 1 under drought treatment in comparison with the WT plants. Consistently, the tobacco lines expressing antisense TaNF-YA1(Anti 1 and Anti 2) showed decrease in plant growth, dry matter accumulation, physiological parameters(photosynthetic physiological parameters, cell protective enzyme activity, stomatal closure rate, water holding capacity of leaf) and drought related gene expressions. This study suggested that TaNF-YA1 promotes root development, photosynthetic assimilate production and homeostasis of cellular reactive oxygen species(ROS), and responds to drought stress to regulate the physiological and biochemical processes related to plant drought resistance, contributing to enhancement of the plant drought resistance.