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. 2025 May 19;14(10):1527.
doi: 10.3390/plants14101527.

Isolation and Expression Pattern Analysis of Larix olgensis LoNAC5: LoNAC5 Acts as a Positive Regulator of Drought and Salt Tolerance

Qing Cao  1 , Junjie Du  1 , Mengxu Yin  1 , Chen Wang  1 , Tiantian Zhang  1 , Qingrong Zhao  1 , Lu Liu  1 , Hanguo Zhang  1 , Lei Zhang  1
Affiliations

Isolation and Expression Pattern Analysis of Larix olgensis LoNAC5: LoNAC5 Acts as a Positive Regulator of Drought and Salt Tolerance

Qing Cao et al. Plants (Basel). .

Abstract

NAC transcription factors are a kind of plant specific transcription factor widely distributed in plants, and they play an important role in the process of plant growth and development. According to the transcriptome data, a transcription factor with typical NAC characteristics was isolated from Larix olgensis (common name "Dahurian larch"), that we named LoNAC5. The length of the coding sequence (CDS) was 1164 bp, encoding 387 amino acids. The LoNAC5 protein harbors a NAM (NAC family) domain at the 14-139 aa region of its N-terminus and an activation domain at the 324-364 aa region of the C-terminus. Phylogenetic tree analysis revealed that LoNAC5 belonged to the ATNAC3 subgroup. Cis-acting element analysis showed that there were multiple plant stress-resistance-related elements on the promoter of LoNAC5, including hormone and light responsiveness elements. LoNAC5 was localized in the nucleus by injection transformation of tobacco leaves. Results suggested that the LoNAC5 protein is active as a homodimer and that it binds to the GATGTG motif. The results of RT-qPCR showed that LoNAC5 is a highly expressed gene in L. olgensis, and the expression level is highest in 180-day needles. LoNAC5 responded to various hormone treatments and was induced by drought and salt stress. The yeast phenotype test showed that overexpression of LoNAC5 could make yeast grow better under drought and salt stress. It was speculated that LoNAC5 might act in L. olgensis as a positive regulator of drought and salt tolerance.

Keywords: Larix olgensis; LoNAC5; bioinformatics analysis; drought and salt tolerance; expression pattern; molecular mechanism.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Subgroup classification analysis of LoNAC5.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Bioinformatics analysis of LoNAC5 protein. (A) The motif analysis of LoNAC5, “*” represents a conserved amino acid; “:” a conservative replacement; “.” a non-conservative replacement; (B) secondary structure prediction of LoNAC5; (C) tertiary structure prediction of LoNAC5.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Expression characteristics of LoNAC5 protein. (A) Activation domain analysis of LoNAC5; (B) structure of LoNAC5 protein; (C) the results of subcellular localization observed by laser confocal microscopy.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Expression analysis of LoNAC5 and LoNAC5 promoter. (A) Expression analysis of LoNAC5 in different growth stages of L. olgensis; (B) expression analysis of LoNAC5 under different treatment; (C) analysis of promoter activity through GUS staining; (D) the cis-acting elements in LoNAC5 promoter sequence.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Influence of LoNAC5 expression in the INVSC1 yeast strain under PEG and salt stress.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Expression characteristics of LoNAC5 in yeast. (A) Homodimer analysis of LoNAC5; (B) binding of CATGTG motif to LoNAC5.
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