Wheat TaWRKY10-1 is involved in biological responses to the salinity and osmostresses in transgenic Arabidopsis plants

Wheat TaWRKY10 is an uncharacterized group II member of the WRKY super family transcription factor and is regulated by high salinity and PEG. In order to study the diverse biological functions of TaWRKY10, we cloned a 783 bp cDNA fragment of this gene from the wheat accession Yangmai 158 ('Triticum aestivem' L.). Subsequent sequence analysis revealed that the cloned fragment contains UTRs and coding region and shows 96% sequence identity to theTaWRKY10gene in Genbank. The amino acid sequences analysis identified15 amino acid differences, mostly at the C-terminus of this protein of 222 amino acids, compared with the TaWRKY10, suggesting that it is likely to be a novel allele of TaWRKY10. Hence we designated it as TaWRKY10-1. RT-PCR results showed thatTaWRKY10-1gene was up-regulated by NaCl and PEG in wheat. To further elucidate its function, we constructed achemical-inducible TaWRKY10-1over-expression plasmid, pKIGW-TaWRKY10-1, via Gateway cloning technology and transformed it into Arabidopsis plants. Over expression of TaWRKY10-1gene increases the sensitivity of transgenic plants to NaCl, PEG and mannitol, indicating TaWRKY10-1 mightact as a negative regulator in response to the salinity and osmostresses. This work provides the key basis for further functional analysis of wheat TaWRKY10-1 gene.