Transgenic Poplar Plants for the Investigation of ABA-Dependent Salt and Drought Stress Adaptation in Trees

Important functions of the plant hormone abscisic acid (ABA) in stress reactions, growth and photosynthetic processes are extensively studied in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana. This paper investigates the importance of Moco-sulphurase ABA3 and aldehyde oxidase (AO) on ABA-biosynthesis in Populus × canescens. ABA3 is essential for activation of the molybdenum enzymes AO and xanthine dehydrogenase (XDH). AO itself catalyzes the last step in ABA-biosynthesis. Generation of transgenic poplar plants altered in ABA3 and AO-activity using RNAi knock down and overexpression was performed. Whereas RNAi-AO plants show a specific loss of AO activity, the RNAi-ABA3 plants has a strongly reduced activity of both molybdenum enzymes: AO and XDH. Constructs of AO and ABA3-promoters fused to β-glucuronidase provide the basis to investigate transcriptional regulation of ABA-biosynthetic processes under stress conditions. Application of high salt concentrations and different drought stress intensities does change the endogenous AO or XDH neither on the side of transcription nor on protein activity. On phytohormone level however, water loss leads to increased ABA-amounts regardless of whether transgenic or wildtype plants are studied. Salt application resulted in higher ABA-levels in all analyzed plant lines. The down regulation of AO in the two different RNAi-plant lines strongly prevented a wildtype-like increase of ABA-levels. Whereas the WT plants accumulated up to 6000 ng ABA g-1 FW-1 after 16 h of salt stress exposure, plants of the RNAi lines revealed a markedly lower increase of only up to 2000 ng ABA g-1 FW-1. Opposing to these observations, ABA-levels increased during drought without any influence by the RNAi-effect. These results revealed that although stresses did not result in a visible increased AO-activity, ABA-production was influenced by AO and ABA3 at least under salinity.