Acta Agriculturae Boreali-Sinica ›› 2025, Vol. 40 ›› Issue (5): 1-11. doi: 10.7668/hbnxb.20195902

Special Issue: Wheat Biotechnology

• Crop Genetics & Breeding· Germplasm Resources· Biotechnology •     Next Articles

Dissection of Key Regulatory Pathways for Low-temperature Tolerance and Functional Verification of TaGGCT18-6A Gene in Wheat

CHENG Chunhua1,2, CHEN Tao1,2, ZHANG Long2, GUO Lijian1, CHE Zhuo1, MA Jingfu1,3, YANG Delong1,2,   

  1. 1 State Key Laboratory of Aridland Crop Science, Lanzhou 730070, China
    2 College of Life Science and Technology, Gansu Agricultural University, Lanzhou 730070, China
    3 Agronomy College, Gansu Agricultural University, Lanzhou 730070, China
  • Received:2025-03-06 Published:2025-11-03

Abstract:

To elucidate the mechanisms of cold response and explore superior cold-tolerance gene resources in wheat,this study employed transcriptome sequencing to uncover key regulatory networks underlying wheat cold response,and performed functional validation of the candidate gene TaGGCT18-6A.The results demonstrated that 4 ℃ cold treatments induced 10 893 and 18 784 differentially expressed genes(DEGs)in wheat seedlings after 6 h and 24 h cold treatment,respectively.KEGG analysis revealed significant enrichment of DEGs in pathways including MAPK signaling transduction and glutathione metabolism.A γ-glutamyl cyclotransferase gene TaGGCT18-6A was cloned through screening key genes in glutathione metabolism.This gene had a length of 1 772 bp,encoding 218 amino acids with conserved GGCT-like superfamily and ChaC core domain.Promoter cis-acting element analysis identified stress-responsive elements such as low-temperature-responsive(LTR)and dehydration-responsive (DRE)elements; consistently,expression pattern analysis showed sustained upregulation of TaGGCT18-6A under 4 ℃ cold treatments. Functional validation in transgenic rice revealed that overexpression lines OE#1, OE#2 and OE#3 exhibited significantly enhanced survival rate,plant height,and biomass. Overexpression lines OE#1 and OE#2 exhibited significantly enhanced plant height, while overexpression lines OE#1, OE#2 and OE#3 exhibited significantly reduced relative electrolyte leakage under -4 ℃ freezing treatments.After 4 ℃ treatment,overexpression lines accumulated higher levels of osmolytes(proline and soluble sugars),decreased malondialdehyde(MDA)content,and increased activities of superoxide dismutase(SOD),peroxidase(POD),and catalase(CAT).These findings collectively demonstrated that TaGGCT18-6A enhanced plant cold tolerance by regulating glutathione metabolism to improve antioxidant capacity.This study will provide a theoretical foundation and valuable genetic resources for molecular breeding of cold-tolerant wheat.

Key words: Wheat, Low temperature stress, Transcriptome analysis, γ-glutamyl cyclotransferase, TaGGCT18-6A

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Cite this article

CHENG Chunhua, CHEN Tao, ZHANG Long, GUO Lijian, CHE Zhuo, MA Jingfu, YANG Delong. Dissection of Key Regulatory Pathways for Low-temperature Tolerance and Functional Verification of TaGGCT18-6A Gene in Wheat[J]. Acta Agriculturae Boreali-Sinica, 2025, 40(5): 1-11. doi: 10.7668/hbnxb.20195902.

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