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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Plant Abiotic Stress
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpls.2025.1535850
This article is part of the Research Topic Advanced Breeding for Abiotic Stress Tolerance in Crops, Volume II View all 16 articles
The ERF transcription factor TaERF13-2B functions as a negative regulator of drought tolerance in Arabidopsis and wheat
Provisionally accepted
Yang Yu 1
Conglei Wang 1 Jianhe Wang 1 Qingfen Xu 1
Shuangxing Zhang 2
Song Tianqi 2 Guodong Li 3
Dan Liang 1* Gang Feng 1*- 1 Tianjin Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Tianjin, China
- 2 College of Agronomy, Northwest A&F University, Xianyang, Shaanxi Province, China
- 3 Xilin Gol League Institute of Agricultural and Pastoral Sciences, Neimenggu, China
Ethylene response factors (ERFs) are transcription factors that are essential in modulating drought stress responses in plants such as Arabidopsis and rice. However, the functional role of ERF in wheat drought stress response remains unclear. We identified 33 wheat ERF genes under drought stress using transcriptomic analysis and categorized them into eight subfamilies (I-VIII). Among them, 12 drought-responsive candidate genes were upregulated, and TaERF13-2B was selected for further analysis.TaERF13-2B overexpression in Arabidopsis resulted in significantly reduced survival rates under drought conditions with decreased expression of stress-responsive and antioxidant enzyme genes, indicating that the TaERF13-2B gene elevated drought sensitivity in transgenic Arabidopsis. In wheat, overexpression of TaERF13-2B under drought stress increased malondialdehyde accumulation, decreased chlorophyll and proline levels, and reduced antioxidant enzyme activity. Furthermore, the expression of stress-responsive and antioxidant-related genes was suppressed, suggesting that TaERF13-2B negatively regulates wheat response to drought stress. The interactions between TaERF13-2B and TaCIPK9 were further confirmed using yeast two-hybrid and bimolecular fluorescence complementation. Overall, these discoveries deepen our insights into the wheat ERF family and contribute to the elucidation of the functional role of TaERF13-2B in wheat.
Keywords: wheat, drought, ERF, TaERF13-2B, Functional verification
Received: 28 Nov 2024; Accepted: 10 Mar 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Yu, Wang, Wang, Xu, Zhang, Tianqi, Li, Liang and Feng. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Dan Liang, Tianjin Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Tianjin, China
Gang Feng, Tianjin Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Tianjin, China
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