GmWRKY53, a water- and salt-inducible soybean gene for rapid dissection of regulatory elements in BY-2 cell culture.

Drought is the major cause of crop losses worldwide. Water stress-inducible promoters are important for understanding the mechanisms of water stress responses in crop plants. Here we utilized tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum L.) Bright Yellow 2 (BY-2) cell system in presence of polyethylene glycol, salt and phytohormones. Extension of the system to 85 mM NaCl led to inducibility of up to 10-fold with the water stress and salt responsive soybean GmWRKY53 promoter. Upon ABA and JA treatment fold inducibility was up to 5-fold and 14-fold, respectively. Thus, we hypothesize that GmWRKY53 could be used as potential model candidate for dissecting drought regulatory elements as well as understanding crosstalk utilizing a rapid heterologous system of BY-2 culture.