The walnut transcription factor JrGRAS2 contributes to high temperature stress tolerance involving in Dof transcriptional regulation and HSP protein expression

BACKGROUND: GRAS transcription factor (TF) family is unique and numerous in higher plants with diverse functions that involving in plant growth and development processes, such as gibberellin (GA) signal transduction, root development, root nodule formation, and mycorrhiza formation. Walnut tree is exposed to various environmental stimulus that causing concern about its resistance mechanism. In order to understand the molecular mechanism of walnut to adversity response, a GRAS TF (JrGRAS2) was cloned and characterized from Juglans regia in this study. RESULTS: A 1500 bp promoter fragment of JrGRAS2 was identified from the genome of J. regia, in which the cis-elements were screened. This JrGRAS2 promoter displayed expression activity that was enhanced significantly by high temperature (HT) stress. Yeast one-hybrid assay, transient expression and chromatin immunoprecipitation (Chip)-PCR analysis revealed that JrDof3 could specifically bind to the DOFCOREZM motif and share similar expression patterns with JrGRAS2 under HT stress. The transcription of JrGRAS2 was induced by HT stress and up-regulated to 6.73-~11.96-fold in the leaf and 2.53-~4.50-fold in the root to control, respectively. JrGRAS2 was overexpressed in Arabidopsis, three lines with much high expression level of JrGRAS2 (S3, S7, and S8) were selected for HT stress tolerance analysis. Compared to the wild type (WT) Arabidopsis, S3, S7, and S8 exhibited enhanced seed germination rate, fresh weight accumulation, and activities of catalase (CAT), peroxidase (POD), superoxide dismutase (SOD) and glutathione-S-transferase (GST) under HT stress. In contrast, the Evans blue staining, electrolyte leakage (EL) rates, hydrogen dioxide (H(2)O(2)) and malondialdehyde (MDA) content of transgenic seedlings were all lower than those of WT exposed to HT stress. Furthermore, the expression of heat shock proteins (HSPs) in S3, S7, and S8 was significant higher than those in WT plants. The similar results were obtained in JrGRAS2 transient overexpression walnut lines under normal and HT stress conditions. CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggested that JrDof3 TF contributes to improve the HT stress response of JrGRAS2, which could effectively control the expression of HSPs to enhance HT stress tolerance. JrGRAS2 is an useful candidate gene for heat response in plant molecular breeding. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12870-018-1568-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.