Qing Liu¹，Shijuan
Yan²，Wenjie
Huang²，Jianyuan Yang³，Jingfang
Dong¹，Shaohong Zhang¹，Junliang Zhao¹，Tifeng Yang¹，Xingxue Mao¹，Xiaoyuan Zhu³，Bin Liu¹

Plant Molecular
Biology

Abstract

Key
messageThis is the first
time to dissect the mechanism of NACs-mediated disease resistance in plants
using metabolomic approach and discover the involvement of ABA signaling
pathway in NACs-mediated disease resistance.

AbstractNAC transcription factors have been validated as important regulators in stress
responses, but their molecular mechanisms in plant disease resistance are still
largely unknown. Here we report that the NAC geneONAC066 (LOC_Os01g09550)is significantly activated by rice blast
infection.ONAC066is ubiquitously
expressed and this protein is localized in the nucleus. Overexpression ofONAC066quantitatively enhances
resistance to blast disease and bacterial blight in rice. The transcript levels
of PR genes are also dramatically induced inONAC066overexpressing plants. Exogenous abscisic acid (ABA) strongly
activates the transcription ofONAC066in rice. Further analysis shows that overexpression ofONAC066remarkably suppresses the expression of ABA-related genes,
whereas there are no obvious differences for salicylic acid (SA) and jasmonic
acid (JA)-related genes between wild-type andONAC066overexpressing plants. Consistently, lower endogenous ABA
levels are identified inONAC066overexpressing plants compared with wild-type plants before and after blast inoculation,
while no significant differences are observed for the SA and JA levels. Yeast
one-hybrid assays demonstrate thatONAC066directly binds to the promoters ofLIP9andNCED4to modulate their expression.
Moreover, the metabolomics study reveals that theONAC066overexpressing plants accumulated higher contents of
soluble sugars and amino acids both before and after pathogen attack, when
compared to wild-type plants. Taken together, our results suggest thatONAC066positively regulates rice
resistance to blast and bacterial blight, andONAC066exerts its functions on disease resistance by modulating of
ABA signaling pathway, sugars and amino acids accumulation in rice.

附件：NAC transcription factor ONAC066 positively regulates disease resistance by suppressing the ABA signaling pathway in rice