Rice Science

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OsWRKY24/70-OsUGT85E1 Regulatory Module Improves Rice Seedling Salt Tolerance

  1. Key Laboratory of Tropical Plant Resources and Sustainable Use, Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Mengla 666303, China; College of Life Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China; School of Agriculture, Yunnan University, Kunming 650500, China; #These authors contributed equally to this article
  • Contact: CHEN Ligang；XU Peng
  • Supported by:

    This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 32270316 and 32100222), the Special Plan for Key Laboratory of ‘Western Light Western cross team’ (Grant No. xbzgzdsys-202111), the Youth Talent Support Program of Yunnan Province (Grant No. YNWR-QNBJ-2019-180), the Yunnan Revitalization Talent Project (Grant No. XDYC-CYCX-2022-0026), the Guizhou Provincial Science and Technology Project (Grant No. QKHJC-ZK[2024] YB660), and the 14th Five-Year Plan of Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden. The authors thank Bingkai Hou at Shandong University for sharing research materials and anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments on early manuscript drafts. We also thank the Central Laboratory of Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden and Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences for technical support.

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Abstract: Soil salinity seriously impedes rice growth and development and greatly reduces its production and quality. Rice responses to salt stress are precisely controlled by intricate transcriptional regulatory networks mediated by various transcription factors. Here, we identified rice WRKY DNA-binding protein 24 (OsWRKY24) and OsWRKY70 as positive regulators of rice seedling salt tolerance. Loss of both OsWRKY24 and OsWRKY70 functions resulted in reduced rice seedling salt tolerance, whereas overexpression of OsWRKY24 or OsWRKY70 improved rice seedling salt tolerance. Consistently, expression of several stress-related genes was reduced in oswrky24/70 double mutants but enhanced in transgenic plants overexpressing OsWRKY24 or OsWRKY70. Further analysis revealed that OsWRKY24 can directly bind the promoter of OsUGT85E1 to activate its expression and OsWRKY70 also participates in the transcriptional regulation of OsUGT85E1. Similarly, loss of OsUGT85E1 function rendered the rice seedling more sensitive to salt stress, whereas overexpression of OsUGT85E1 improved rice seedling salt tolerance. Interestingly, OsWRKY24 physically interacts with OsWRKY70 to form a functional complex and synergistically activate OsUGT85E1 expression. Genetically, OsWRKY24/70 positively regulates rice seedling salt tolerance in a partially OsUGT85E1-dependent manner. Taken together, our study provides insights into the OsWRKY24/70-OsUGT85E1 module in rice seedling salt tolerance and contributes to the construction of the salt stress-associated transcriptional regulatory networks in rice.

Key words: Oryza sativa, OsWRKY24, OsWRKY70, salt tolerance, transcription regulation, OsUGT85E1