Characterization and Expression Analysis of Four Glycine-Rich RNA-Binding Proteins Involved in Osmotic Response in Tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum cv. Xanthi)

Plants have developed many signals and specific genes' regulations at both transcriptional and post-transcriptional levels in order to tolerate and adapt to various environmental stresses. RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) play crucial roles in the post-transcriptional regulation via mRNA splicing, polyadenylation, sequence editing, transport, mRNA stability, mRNA localization, and translation. In this paper, four cDNAs of glycine-rich RNA-binding proteins (GR-RBPs), named NtRGP-1a, -1b, -2, and -3, were isolated from Nicotiana tabacum by RT-PCR analysis, and special emphases were given to the sequences alignment, phylogenetic analysis and gene expression. Sequences alignment revealed minor difference of cDNA sequences, but no difference of deduced proteins between N. sylvestris and N. tabacum. Phylogenetic alignment revealed that four cDNAs in tobacco were clustered into two different groups. NtRGP-2 and -3 were evolutionarily closest to Arabidopsis GR-RBPs genes and related to animal GR-RBPs genes, while NtRGP-1a and -1b were closest to Gramineae GR-RBPs genes. The expression analyses of these four NtRGPs in response to different abiotic stresses revealed the similar expression pattern. Moreover, the four NtRGPs, especially NtRGP-1a and NtRGP-3, were strongly induced by stresses including water, wound, cold, and high temperature, weakly induced by PEG, drought and SA, while reduced by NaCl and unaffected by ABA treatment. The fact that all of these abiotic stresses included in our experiments affected the water balance and resulted in osmotic stress on cellular level, suggests that NtRGPs in tobacco should be a family of crucial osmosis-related proteins, and may play a key role in signal transduction with ABA-independent pathway under abiotic stresses.