AtHMA4 drives natural variation in leaf Zn concentration of Arabidopsis thaliana

Zinc (Zn) is an essential element for plant growth and development, and Zn derived from crop plants in the diet is also important for human health. Here, we report that genetic variation in Heavy Metal-ATPase 4 (HMA4) controls natural variation in leaf Zn content. Investigation of the natural variat...

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Main Authors: Chen, Zi-Ru, Kuang, Lu, Gao, Yi-Qun, Wang, Ya-Ling, Salt, David E., Chao, Dai-Yin
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Frontiers Media 2018
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Online Access:https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/51027/
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author Chen, Zi-Ru
Kuang, Lu
Gao, Yi-Qun
Wang, Ya-Ling
Salt, David E.
Chao, Dai-Yin
author_facet Chen, Zi-Ru
Kuang, Lu
Gao, Yi-Qun
Wang, Ya-Ling
Salt, David E.
Chao, Dai-Yin
author_sort Chen, Zi-Ru
building Nottingham Research Data Repository
collection Online Access
description Zinc (Zn) is an essential element for plant growth and development, and Zn derived from crop plants in the diet is also important for human health. Here, we report that genetic variation in Heavy Metal-ATPase 4 (HMA4) controls natural variation in leaf Zn content. Investigation of the natural variation in leaf Zn content in a world-wide collection of 349 Arabidopsis thaliana wild collected accessions identified two accessions, Van-0 and Fab-2, which accumulate significantly lower Zn when compared with Col-0. Both quantitative trait loci (QTL) analysis and bulked segregant analysis (BSA) identified HMA4 as a strong candidate accounting for this variation in leaf Zn concentration. Genetic complementation experiments confirmed this hypothesis. Sequence analysis revealed that a 1-bp deletion in the third exon of HMA4 from Fab-2 is responsible for the lose of function of HMA4 driving the low Zn observed in Fab-2. Unlike in Fab-2 polymorphisms in the promoter region were found to be responsible for the weak function of HMA4 in Van-0. This is supported by both an expression analysis of HMA4 in Van-0 and through a series of T-DNA insertion mutants which generate truncated HMA4 promoters in the Col-0 background. In addition, we also observed that Fab-2, Van-0 and the hma4-2 null mutant in the Col-0 background show enhanced resistance to a combination of high Zn and high Cd in the growth medium, raising the possibility that variation at HMA4 may play a role in environmental adaptation.
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spelling nottingham-510272018-04-10T09:44:28Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/51027/ AtHMA4 drives natural variation in leaf Zn concentration of Arabidopsis thaliana Chen, Zi-Ru Kuang, Lu Gao, Yi-Qun Wang, Ya-Ling Salt, David E. Chao, Dai-Yin Zinc (Zn) is an essential element for plant growth and development, and Zn derived from crop plants in the diet is also important for human health. Here, we report that genetic variation in Heavy Metal-ATPase 4 (HMA4) controls natural variation in leaf Zn content. Investigation of the natural variation in leaf Zn content in a world-wide collection of 349 Arabidopsis thaliana wild collected accessions identified two accessions, Van-0 and Fab-2, which accumulate significantly lower Zn when compared with Col-0. Both quantitative trait loci (QTL) analysis and bulked segregant analysis (BSA) identified HMA4 as a strong candidate accounting for this variation in leaf Zn concentration. Genetic complementation experiments confirmed this hypothesis. Sequence analysis revealed that a 1-bp deletion in the third exon of HMA4 from Fab-2 is responsible for the lose of function of HMA4 driving the low Zn observed in Fab-2. Unlike in Fab-2 polymorphisms in the promoter region were found to be responsible for the weak function of HMA4 in Van-0. This is supported by both an expression analysis of HMA4 in Van-0 and through a series of T-DNA insertion mutants which generate truncated HMA4 promoters in the Col-0 background. In addition, we also observed that Fab-2, Van-0 and the hma4-2 null mutant in the Col-0 background show enhanced resistance to a combination of high Zn and high Cd in the growth medium, raising the possibility that variation at HMA4 may play a role in environmental adaptation. Frontiers Media 2018-03-01 Article PeerReviewed application/pdf en cc_by https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/51027/1/Chen%20et%20al.%202018.pdf Chen, Zi-Ru, Kuang, Lu, Gao, Yi-Qun, Wang, Ya-Ling, Salt, David E. and Chao, Dai-Yin (2018) AtHMA4 drives natural variation in leaf Zn concentration of Arabidopsis thaliana. Frontiers in Plant Science, 9 . 270/1-270/11. ISSN 1664-462X Arabidopsis thaliana BSA cadmium Heavy Metal ATPase 4 natural variation QTL zinc https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpls.2018.00270/full doi:10.3389/fpls.2018.00270 doi:10.3389/fpls.2018.00270
spellingShingle Arabidopsis thaliana
BSA
cadmium
Heavy Metal ATPase 4
natural variation
QTL
zinc
Chen, Zi-Ru
Kuang, Lu
Gao, Yi-Qun
Wang, Ya-Ling
Salt, David E.
Chao, Dai-Yin
AtHMA4 drives natural variation in leaf Zn concentration of Arabidopsis thaliana
title AtHMA4 drives natural variation in leaf Zn concentration of Arabidopsis thaliana
title_full AtHMA4 drives natural variation in leaf Zn concentration of Arabidopsis thaliana
title_fullStr AtHMA4 drives natural variation in leaf Zn concentration of Arabidopsis thaliana
title_full_unstemmed AtHMA4 drives natural variation in leaf Zn concentration of Arabidopsis thaliana
title_short AtHMA4 drives natural variation in leaf Zn concentration of Arabidopsis thaliana
title_sort athma4 drives natural variation in leaf zn concentration of arabidopsis thaliana
topic Arabidopsis thaliana
BSA
cadmium
Heavy Metal ATPase 4
natural variation
QTL
zinc
url https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/51027/
https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/51027/
https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/51027/