Funcitonal characterization of peach furit PpZAT12 and Arabidopsis At ZAT12 transcription factors

GISMODI, MAURO; STROLOGO, LAURA; GABILONDO, JULIETA; BUDDE, CLAUDIO OLAF; LARA, MARÍA VALERIA; DRINCOVICH, MARÍA FABIANA; BUSTAMANTE, CLAUDIA

Córdoba

Congreso; LII Reunión Anual de la Sociedad Argentina de Investigación Bioquímica y Biología Molecular; 2016

Sociedad Argentina de Investigación Bioquímica y Biología Molecular (SAIB)

Refrigeration is used to prevent the rapid decay of peaches atambient temperature. However, low temperatures can generatechilling injury (CI), a group of physiological disorders whichseverely affects fruit quality. Many postharvest approaches weredeveloped to prevent CI, being heat treatment (HT) prior to coldstorage a proven efficient strategy. PpZAT12 mRNA was induced in HT-treated fruits and also after cold storage of CI-tolerant cultivars. It encodes a C2H2-typezinc finger transcription factor with an EAR repressor motif, as the reported systemic stress marker AtZAT12 from A. thaliana. Cold-andheat-driveninductions of AtZAT12 mRNA were confirmed indifferent organs. Comparative promoter analysis of phylogenetic-clusteredorthologues from different species allowed us to identify conserved cis elements which wouldaccount for the diversity of stimuli that generally alters ZAT12 expression. We obtained 35S::AtZAT12 and 35S::PpZAT12/KOAtZAT12 Arabidopsis transgenic lines and both had impaired growth, rendering smaller plants (compared to wild-type) withcurved leaves. Several targets of AtZAT12 were assessed, showing the different molecularprocesses in which both genesmay be involved in. These results point that the transcriptionfactor PpZAT12 could have a protective role against CI in P. persica, achieved by similar molecular functionalities than AtZAT12 in A. thaliana.