Chinese Bulletin of Botany ›› 2014, Vol. 49 ›› Issue (5): 548-559.DOI: 10.3724/SP.J.1259.2014.00548

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The Role of Banana MaASR1 in Drought Stress Tolerance

Hongxia Miao1, Yuan Wang1, Biyu Xu1, Juhua Liu1, Caihong Jia1, Jianbin Zhang1, Zhuo Wang1, Peiguang Sun2, Zhiqiang Jin1,2*   

  1. 1Institute of Tropical Bioscience and Biotechnology, Chinese Academy of Tropical Agricultural Sciences/Key Laboratory of Biology and Genetic Resources of Tropical Crops, Ministry of Agriculture, Haikou 571101, China;

    2Haikou Experimental Station, Chinese Academy of Tropical Agricultural Sciences/Hainan Provincial Key Laboratory for Genetics and Breeding of Banana, Haikou 570102, China
  • Received:2013-09-26 Revised:2014-03-21 Online:2014-09-01 Published:2014-07-02
  • Contact: Zhiqiang Jin

Abstract: ASR (abscisic acid [ABA], stress, ripening-induced) proteins are a class of transcriptional factors involved in drought stress tolerance in many plant species. However, the regulation mechanism of ASR in banana under drought stress tolerance is not known. Previously, we screened a new ASR gene from the cDNA library of banana (Musa acuminata cv. ‘Brazilian’), designated MaASR1 (accession no. AY628102). MaASR1 expression was higher in leaves than roots under drought stress. MaASR1 was transferred into Arabidopsis thaliana and two independent transgenic lines (L14, L38) were obtained. The leaves of MaASR1 transgenic lines were smaller and thicker than those of the wild type. Survival rate and proline content were higher in L14 and L38 than in the wild type after drought treatment. Under drought stress and ABA treatment, We found that MaASR1 could enhance the sensitivity of the transgenic plants to ABA signal but did not improve ABA-dependent drought stress tolerance.