Open Access

ARTICLE

Response of MaHMA2 gene expression and stress tolerance to zinc stress in mulberry (Morus alba L.)

LEI WANG^1,#, QIUXIA DU^1,#, YISU SHI^1,#, MICHAEL ACKAH¹, PENG GUO¹, DANYAN ZHENG¹, MENGMENG WU¹, XIN JIN¹, PEILAN LI³, QIAONAN ZHANG¹, RUIXUE LI⁴, ZHI YIN³, MENGDI ZHAO^2,*, WEIGUO ZHAO^1,*

1 School of Biology and Technology, Jiangsu University of Science and Technology, Zhenjiang, 212018, China
2 Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Suzhou University of Science and Technology, Suzhou, 215004, China
3 Nanjing University of Finance & Economics, Nanjing, 210023, China
4 Sericultural Research Institute, Anhui Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Hefei, 230061, China

* Corresponding Authors: MENGDI ZHAO. Email: ; WEIGUO ZHAO. Email:
# These authors contributed equally to this work

(This article belongs to the Special Issue: Physiology and Molecular Biology of Plant Stress Tolerance)

BIOCELL 2022, 46(10), 2327-2342. https://doi.org/10.32604/biocell.2022.021542

Received 20 January 2022; Accepted 03 March 2022; Issue published 13 June 2022

Abstract

HMA2 (heavy metal ATPase 2) plays a crucial role in extracellular and intracellular Zn²⁺ transport across biomembranes, maintaining ion homeostasis, and playing an important role in the normal physiological metabolism, growth, and development of plants. In our study, a novel HMA2 gene, named MaHMA2, was isolated and cloned from white mulberry (Morus alba L.). The gene sequence obtained was 1,342 bp long, with an open reading frame of 1,194 bp, encoding a protein of 397 amino acids, with a predicted molecular mass of 42.852 kD and an isoelectric point of 7.53. This protein belonged to the PIB-type ATPase transport protein family. We analyzed the expression of the MaHMA2 gene by quantitative real-time PCR. The results showed that the level of MaHMA2 gene expression decreased to a Zn concentration of 800 mg/kg. Malondialdehyde and proline levels increased and responded to increasing Zn when the MaHMA2 gene was silenced, whereas the activities of peroxidase and superoxide dismutase tended to increase in response to increasing Zn²⁺ ion stress concentrations but were lower in the gene-silenced plants. These findings suggested that the MaHMA2 gene played an active role in the tolerance response of mulberry to Zn stress.

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Keywords

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