OsPATA1 deficiency enhances ABA-dependent salt tolerance by sequestering OsEULD1b in the cytosol of rice

초록

Abiotic stresses, particularly salinity, pose a major threat to rice productivity, highlighting the need to identify novel genetic resources to improve stress tolerance. Gamma irradiation remains one of the most widely used tools breeding stress-tolerant plant varieties. In this study, we identified a salt-tolerant rice mutant, salt-insensitive TILLING line 4 (sitl4), generated via gamma irradiation and linked its enhanced tolerance to a loss-of-function mutation in Oryza sativa protein acyltransferase for ABA response 1 (OsPATA1), which encodes a DHHC-type palmitoyl acyltransferase. Functional analyses using both sitl4 and a CRISPR/Cas9-mediated OsPATA1-knockout line (ospata1) revealed that disruption of OsPATA1 leads to increased abscisic acid (ABA) accumulation and upregulation of ABA-responsive genes under salt stress conditions. We identified OsEULD1b, a previously uncharacterized Euonymus lectin (EUL) domaincontaining protein, as an interactor of OsPATA1. In sitl4 and ospata1, OsEULD1b displayed cytosolic retention, suggesting that its subcellular redistribution enhances its role in ABA-mediated stress signaling. Taken together, our findings demonstrate that OsPATA1 and OsEULD1b form a regulatory module that modulates the ABA-dependent salt stress responses in rice. These results provide new insights into the molecular mechanisms underlying abiotic stress tolerance and will help to identify potential genetic targets for developing stress-tolerant rice cultivars through molecular breeding or genome editing. (c) 2025 Crop Science Society of China and Institute of Crop Science, CAAS. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of KeAi Communications Co., Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NCND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

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