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Low temperature can affect the development of plants and the yield of crops. Ethylene (ETH) is known to positively regulate cold tolerance. However, the role of ETH in transcriptional regulation of grapevine leaves subjected to low temperature stress remains poorly understood.

Researchers from the Wuhan Botanical Garden of the Chinese Academy of Sciences selected leaves of V. amurensis, a wild grape variety that is extremely cold-tolerant in winter, as experimental material. They investigated changes in the transcriptome and phytohormones of grapevine leaves under low temperature stress, identified genes regulated by ETH under low temperature stress and discussed possible interactions between ETH and other low temperature-induced phytohormones.

The researchers found that two highly enriched transcription factors families, APETALA2/ETHYLENE RESPONSIVE FACTOR (AP2/ERF) and WRKY, exhibited consistent up-regulation in response to cold stress, but inhibited by aminoethoxyvinylglycine (AVG, an inhibitor of ETH synthesis) treatment. The study was published in Plant Physiology and Biochemistry on March 10.

The inhibition of ETH synthesis (using AVG) enables the identification of genes positively and negatively regulated by ETH that participates in a wide range of biological processes, such as, solute transport, protein biosynthesis, phytohormone action, antioxidant and carbohydrate metabolism.

Beyond their potential roles in regulating many aspects of cellular metabolism, transcriptone and phytohormone analysis also indicates that ETH may regulate the abscisic acid (ABA) and indole-3-acetic acid (IAA) synthesis-related genes, thus contributing to respective phytohormone accumulation and potential downstream signals.

This work provides new insight into the ETH signaling pathways and ETH-regulated genes under cold stress, and presents candidate gene resource for breeding cold-resilient grapevines.

More information: Yujun Hou et al, Dissecting the effect of ethylene in the transcriptional regulation of chilling treatment in grapevine leaves, Plant Physiology and Biochemistry (2023). DOI: 10.1016/j.plaphy.2023.03.015

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Ethylene transcriptionally regulates cold stress in grapevine leaves - Phys.org