Overexpression of the brassinosteroid biosynthetic gene DWF4 in Brassica napus simultaneously increases seed yield and stress tolerance

Sangita Sahni, Bishun D. Prasad, Qing Liu, Vojislava Grbic, Andrew Sharpe, Surinder P. Singh, Priti Krishna

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191 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

As a resource allocation strategy, plant growth and defense responses are generally mutually antagonistic. Brassinosteroid (BR) regulates many aspects of plant development and stress responses, however, genetic evidence of its integrated effects on plant growth and stress tolerance is lacking. We overexpressed the Arabidopsis BR biosynthetic gene AtDWF4 in the oilseed plant Brassica napus and scored growth and stress response phenotypes. The transgenic B. napus plants, in comparison to wild type, displayed increased seed yield leading to increased overall oil content per plant, higher root biomass and root length, significantly better tolerance to dehydration and heat stress, and enhanced resistance to necrotrophic fungal pathogens Leptosphaeria maculans and Sclerotinia sclerotiorum. Transcriptome analysis supported the integrated effects of BR on growth and stress responses; in addition to BR responses associated with growth, a predominant plant defense signature, likely mediated by BES1/BZR1, was evident in the transgenic plants. These results establish that BR can interactively and simultaneously enhance abiotic and biotic stress tolerance and plant productivity. The ability to confer pleiotropic beneficial effects that are associated with different agronomic traits suggests that BR-related genes may be important targets for simultaneously increasing plant productivity and performance under stress conditions.
Original languageEnglish
Article number28298
Number of pages14
JournalScientific Reports
Volume6
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2016

Open Access - Access Right Statement

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder.

Keywords

  • Arabidopsis
  • brassinosteroids
  • seeds
  • stress

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