Overexpression of the Transcription Factor GmbZIP60 Increases Salt and Drought Tolerance in Soybean (Glycine max)

The regulation of downstream responsive genes by transcription factors (TFs) is a critical step in the stress response system of plants. While bZIP transcription factors are known to play important roles in stress reactions, their functional characterization in soybeans remains limited. Here, we identified a soybean bZIP gene, GmbZIP60, which encodes a protein containing a typical bZIP domain with a basic region and a leucine zipper region. Subcellular localization studies confirmed that GmbZIP60 is localized in the nucleus. Expression analysis demonstrated that GmbZIP60 is induced by salt stress, drought stress, and various plant hormone treatments, including abscisic acid (ABA), ethylene (ETH), and methyl jasmonate acid (MeJA). Overexpressing GmbZIP60 (OE-GmbZIP60) in transgenic soybean and rice enhanced tolerance to both salt and drought stresses. Quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) analysis indicated that the expression levels of abiotic stress-responsive genes were significantly higher in transgenic plants than in wild-type (WT) plants under stress conditions. Chromatin immunoprecipitation-qPCR (ChIP-qPCR) analysis further confirmed that GmbZIP60 directly binds to the promoters of abiotic stress-related genes induced by ABA, ETH, JA, and salicylic acid (SA). Overall, these findings revealed GmbZIP60 as a positive regulator of salt and drought stress tolerance.

• Publication year

  2025

• Venue

  International Journal of Molecular Sciences

• Publication date

  2025-04-01

• Fields of study

  Biology, Medicine, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.3390/ijms26073455PMID 40244391PMCID 11989446
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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