1. Cloning of the Cryptochrome-Encoding PeCRY1 Gene from Populus euphratica and Functional Analysis in Arabidopsis
- Author
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Rongling Wu, Fang Xu, Libo Jiang, Ke Mao, and Wenhao Bo
- Subjects
Models, Molecular ,Protein Structure ,DNA, Complementary ,Plant Cell Biology ,Science ,Molecular Sequence Data ,Arabidopsis ,Plant Science ,Genes, Plant ,Biochemistry ,Protein Structure, Secondary ,Bimolecular fluorescence complementation ,Cryptochrome ,Molecular Cell Biology ,Botany ,Macromolecular Structure Analysis ,Arabidopsis thaliana ,Amino Acid Sequence ,Biomacromolecule-Ligand Interactions ,Cloning, Molecular ,Photosynthesis ,Photolyase ,Molecular Biology ,Plant Growth and Development ,Multidisciplinary ,Biology and life sciences ,biology ,fungi ,DNA structure ,Proteins ,food and beverages ,DNA ,Cell Biology ,biology.organism_classification ,Cell biology ,Cryptochromes ,Populus ,Plant Physiology ,Medicine ,Plant Biotechnology ,Photomorphogenesis ,Heterologous expression ,Populus euphratica ,Research Article ,Biotechnology ,Developmental Biology - Abstract
Cryptochromes are photolyase-like blue/UV-A light receptors that evolved from photolyases. In plants, cryptochromes regulate various aspects of plant growth and development. Despite of their involvement in the control of important plant traits, however, most studies on cryptochromes have focused on lower plants and herbaceous crops, and no data on cryptochrome function are available for forest trees. In this study, we isolated a cryptochrome gene, PeCRY1, from Euphrates poplar (Populus euphratica), and analyzed its structure and function in detail. The deduced PeCRY1 amino acid sequence contained a conserved N-terminal photolyase-homologous region (PHR) domain as well as a C-terminal DQXVP-acidic-STAES (DAS) domain. Secondary and tertiary structure analysis showed that PeCRY1 shares high similarity with AtCRY1 from Arabidopsis thaliana. PeCRY1 expression was upregulated at the mRNA level by light. Using heterologous expression in Arabidopsis, we showed that PeCRY1 overexpression rescued the cry1 mutant phenotype. In addition, PeCRY1 overexpression inhibited hypocotyl elongation, promoted root growth, and enhanced anthocyanin accumulation in wild-type background seedlings grown under blue light. Furthermore, we examined the interaction between PeCRY1 and AtCOP1 using a bimolecular fluorescence complementation (BiFc) assay. Our data provide evidence for the involvement of PeCRY1 in the control of photomorphogenesis in poplar.
- Published
- 2014