AtbHLH29 of Arabidopsis thaliana is a functional ortholog of tomato FER involved in controlling iron acquisition in strategy I plants

AtbHLH29 of Arabidopsis, encoding a bHLH protein, reveals a high similarity to the tomato FER which is proposed as a transcriptional regulator involved in controlling the iron deficiency responses and the iron uptake in tomato. For identification of its biological functions, AtbHLH29 was introduced into the genome of the tomato FER mutant T3238fer mediated by Agrobacterium tumefaciencs. Transgenic plants were regenerated and the stable integration of AtbHLH29 into their genomes was confirmed by Southern hybridization. Molecular analysis demonstrated that expression of the exogenous AtbHLH29 of Arabidopsis in roots of the FER mutant T3238fer enabled to complement the defect functions of FER. The transgenic plants regained the ability to activate the whole iron deficiency responses and showed normal growth as the wild type under iron-limiting stress. Our transformation data demonstrate that AtbHLH29 is a functional ortholog of the tomato FER and can completely replace FER in controlling the effective iron acquisition in tomato. Except of iron, FER protein was directly or indirectly involved in manganese homeostasis due to that loss functions of FER in T3238fer resulted in strong reduction of Mn content in leaves and the defect function on Mn accumulation in leaves was complemented by expression of AtbHLH29 in the transgenic plants. Identification of the similar biological functions of FER and AtbHLH29, which isolated from two systematically wide-diverged “strategy I” plants, suggests that FER might be a universal gene presented in all strategy I plants in controlling effective iron acquisition system in roots.

Further Analysis of the Function of AtBHLH29 in Regulating the Iron Uptake Process in Arabidopsis thaliana

Using T-DNA insertion and chemical mutants, two recent studies have shown that AtBHLH29, encoding a putative basic helix-loop-helix （BHLH） protein, is involved in regulating the iron uptake process in Arabidopsis thaliana. Herein, we report that RNA interference （RNAi） mutants can be used to reveal more accurately the genetic function of AtBHLH29. We compared the iron deficiency responses of seven RNAi strains that contained decreasing amounts of AtBHLH29transcripts. Under high iron conditions （50 μmol/L iron）, only in the most severe RNAi strains （R101, R111, and R119） was plant growth significantly retarded. However, these mutants could still survive and produce seeds. This suggests that the function of AtBHLH29 is beneficial, but not absolutely essential, to plant growth when iron supply is not limiting. Under low iron conditions （less than 10 μmol/L iron）, the Rlll and R119 strains died prematurely, demonstrating that AtBHLH29 is absolutely necessary for plant survival when iron supply is restricted. The transcription of AtBHLH29 was essential for the expression of AtFRO2 （encoding the ferric chelate reductase）. In contrast, the expression of AtlRT1 （encoding the high-affinity iron transporter） was not so strongly dependent upon the transcription of AtBHLH29. By transient expression, we found that the AtBHLH29-GUS fusion protein was targeted specifically to the nucleus in plant cells. Interestingly, the nuclear localization of AtBHLH29-GUS was abolished when the four consecutive arginine residues located in the basic region of the putative AtBHLH29 protein were replaced by alanine residues by mutagenesis. The implications of our findings on further studies of the mechanism underlying the function of AtBHLH29 are discussed.