Stress inducible galactinol synthase of chickpea (CaGolS) implicates in heat and oxidative stress tolerance through reducing stress induced excessive reactive oxygen species accumulation

Abstract

Raffinose Family Oligosaccharides (RFOs) participates in various aspects of plant physiology and galactinol synthase (GolS, EC 2.4.1.123) catalyzes the key step of RFO biosynthesis. Stress induced accumulation of RFOs particularly galactinol and raffinose has been reported in few plants; however their precise role and mechanistic insight in stress adaptation remain elusive. In present study, we have shown that the GolS activity as well as galactinol and raffinose content are significantly increased in response to various abiotic stresses in chickpea. Transcriptional analysis indicated that the CaGolS1 and CaGolS2 genes are induced in response to different abiotic stresses. Interestingly, heat and oxidative stress preferentially induce CaGolS1 over CaGolS2. Insilco analysis revealed several common yet distinct cis-acting regulatory elements in their 5' upstream regulatory sequences. Further, in vitro biochemical analysis revealed that CaGolS1 enzyme functions better in stressful conditions than CaGolS2 enzyme. Finally, Arabidopsis transgenic plants constitutively overexpressing CaGolS1 or CaGolS2 not only exhibits significantly increased galactinol but also raffinose content and display better growth responses than wild type or vector control plants when exposed to heat and oxidative stress. Further, improved tolerance of transgenic lines are associated with reduced accumulation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and consequent lipid peroxidation as compared to control plants.Collectively, our data implies that GolS enzyme activity and consequent galactinol and raffinose content are significantly increased in response to stresses to mitigate stress induced growth inhibition by restricting excessive ROS accumulation and consequent lipid peroxidation in plants.