GhCOR27, Which Encodes a Cold-related Gene, Is Involved in Cotton Tolerance to Cold Stress

摘要

The growth and development of crop plants are greatly affected by various abiotic stresses such as cold stress. Cold stress tolerance is triggered by a sensing mechanism, leading to signaling transduction in plants. Especially in the model species Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) it was found that cold-related genes play important roles via cold stress. Cotton is thermophilic and sensitive to cold temperature during its development and growth. However, the mechanism of about cotton how to sense the cold response remains elusive. Here, we isolated a gene from cotton seedling cDNA, which phylogenetic analysis clustered it into the Cold-Related gene member and the protein sequences showed that its closest homolog is Arabidopsis AtCOR27, so we defined it as GhCOR27. Furthermore, the expression pattern analysis via real-time PCR used peculiar GhCOR27 primers demonstrated that GhCOR27 mRNA accumulated abundance was gradually induced at low temperature. In addition, the cotton seedlings of silenced-GhCOR27 through virus-induced gene silencing (VIGS) exhibited a more severe chilling injury phenotype at low temperature. These results suggested that GhCOR27 may play a role in response to cotton cold stress response.