Overexpression of BoNAC019, a NAC transcription factor from Brassica oleracea, negatively regulates the dehydration response and anthocyanin biosynthesis in Arabidopsis

NACs are one of the largest transcription factor families in plants and are involved in the response to abiotic stress. BoNAC019, a homologue of AtNAC019, was isolated from cabbage (Brassica oleracea). BoNAC019 was localized in the nucleus and functioned as a transcriptional activator. The expression of BoNAC019 was induced by dehydration, salt, abscisic acid (ABA), and H(2)O(2) treatments. BoNAC019 overexpressing plants were generated to explore the function of BoNAC019 in response to drought stress. Overexpression (OE) of BoNAC019 reduced drought tolerance with lower survival rate, higher water loss rate, lower proline content and ABA content. The seed germination and root length assays of BoNAC019-OE plants showed decreased sensitivity to ABA. Under drought condition, antioxidant enzymes and anthocyanin content decreased in BoNAC019 -OE plants, resulting in the accumulation of more reactive oxygen species (ROS), which cause damage to plants. Several stress-responsive genes, antioxidant enzymatic genes, anthocyanin biosynthetic genes and ABA signaling genes were down-regulated under drought condition while the ABA catabolism genes were induced in BoNAC019-OE plants under both normal and drought conditions. Our results demonstrated that BoNAC019 might participated in regulating drought tolerance by inducing ABA catabolism genes and decreasing ABA content.