A Novel <i>DUF569</i> Gene Is a Positive Regulator of the Drought Stress Response in Arabidopsis

oleh: Rizwana Begum Syed Nabi, Rupesh Tayade, Adil Hussain, Arjun Adhikari, In-Jung Lee, Gary J. Loake, Byung-Wook Yun

Format: Article
Diterbitkan: MDPI AG 2021-05-01

Deskripsi

In the last two decades, global environmental change has increased abiotic stress on plants and severely affected crops. For example, drought stress is a serious abiotic stress that rapidly and substantially alters the morphological, physiological, and molecular responses of plants. In Arabidopsis, several drought-responsive genes have been identified; however, the underlying molecular mechanism of drought tolerance in plants remains largely unclear. Here, we report that the “domain of unknown function” novel gene <i>DUF569</i> (<i>AT1G69890</i>) positively regulates drought stress in Arabidopsis. The Arabidopsis loss-of-function mutant atduf569 showed significant sensitivity to drought stress, i.e., severe wilting at the rosette-leaf stage after water was withheld for 3 days. Importantly, the mutant plant did not recover after rewatering, unlike wild-type (WT) plants. In addition, <i>atduf569</i> plants showed significantly lower abscisic acid accumulation under optimal and drought-stress conditions, as well as significantly higher electrolyte leakage when compared with WT Col-0 plants. Spectrophotometric analyses also indicated a significantly lower accumulation of polyphenols, flavonoids, carotenoids, and chlorophylls in <i>atduf569</i> mutant plants. Overall, our results suggest that novel <i>DUF569</i> is a positive regulator of the response to drought in Arabidopsis.