Pyrus betulaefolia ERF3 interacts with HsfC1a to coordinately regulate aquaporin PIP1;4 and NCED4 for drought tolerance

Abstract

Environmental disasters like drought reduce agricultural output and plant growth. Redox management significantly affects plant stress responses. An earlier study found that PbPIP1;4 transports H₂O₂ and promotes H₂O₂ downstream cascade signaling to restore redox equilibrium. However, this regulatory mechanism requires additional investigation. In this search, the AP2 domain- containing transcription factor was isolated by screening Y1H from the wild pear ( Pyrus betulaefolia ) cDNA library, named PbERF3. The overexpression of PbERF3 in pear callus and Arabidopsis enhanced plant resistance to drought and re-established redox balance. The transcripts of the NCEDs gene were upregulated under drought stress. The drought stress-related abscisic acid (ABA) signaling pathway modulates PbERF3. PbERF3 silencing lowered drought tolerance. Furthermore, yeast 2-hybrid, luciferase, bimolecular fluorescence complementation, and co-immunoprecipitation assays verified that PbERF3 physically interacted with PbHsfC1a. The PbERF3-PbHsfC1a heterodimer coordinately bound to PbPIP1;4 and PbNCED4 promoter, therefore activating both the H₂O₂ and the ABA signaling pathway. This work revealed a novel PbERF3-PbHsfC1a- PbNCED4 - PbPIP1;4 regulatory module, in which PbERF3 interacts with PbHsfC1a to trigger the expression of target genes. This module establishes an interaction between the H₂O₂ signaling component PbPIP1;4 and the ABA pathways component PbNCED4, enabling a response to drought.

Acknowledgments

This work has been supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2019YFD1000102), the Key Research and Development Program of Jiangsu Province (BE2023328), the National Science Foundation of China (32072538), the Jiangsu Agriculture Science and Technology Innovation Fund (CX(22)3046), and Postgraduate Research and Practice Innovation Program of Jiangsu (KYCX23_0795).

Author Contributions

X.S.H., F.Z., and Z.J.P. designed the project and experiments. F.Z. and Z.J.P. performed most of the experiments. C.Y.H., H.Z.D., L.K.L., Q.H.Q., and K.K.Z. analyzed the data. S.L.Z. provided the research platform. X.S.H., S.T.T., and J.Y.W. directed the manuscript. All authors have read, evaluated, and endorsed the final manuscript.

Data Availability

All relevant data can be found within the manuscript and its supporting materials.

Conflict of interest statement

All authors disclosed no relevant relationships.

Supplementary data

Supplementary data is available at Horticulture Research online.

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