Streptomyces sp. TOR3209 alleviates cold stress in tomato plants

ABSTRACT

Streptomyces sp. TOR3209 is a plant growth-promoting rhizobacterium for tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) plants. This work reports its role in alleviating cold stress in tomato plants. By comparison with the wilting untreated controls, plants receiving TOR3209 treatment grew well at the low temperature of 5°C. To better understand the molecular mechanism induced by TOR3209 under cold stress, RNA sequencing was conducted in both leaf and root tissues to screen the differentially expressed genes. Twenty-nine up-regulated genes at 5°C were classified into three functional groups, such as abscisic acid biosynthesis and stress-related metabolism in roots, and photosynthesis in leaves. The increased amounts of abscisic acid, cold stress metabolites, antioxidants in the roots and increased photosynthetic activities in the leaves were subsequently verified in the plants treated with TOR3209. Our data demonstrate that Streptomyces sp. TOR3209 plays an extra role in promoting cold tolerance of tomato plants by regulating the abscisic acid signalling pathway, stress-related metabolism and photosynthesis.

KEYWORDS:

• Tomato
• Streptomyces
• cold tolerance
• RNA-Seq
• abscisic acid
• stress-related metabolite
• photosynthesis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The raw data have been deposited in the SRA database under the accession number PRJNA771136.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the project of the Natural Science Foundation of Hebei Province [grant number C2020301047], the Key Research and Development Program of Hebei [grant number 19222902D], the National Key Research and Development Program of China [grant number 2021YFD1901004-4] and the HAAFS Science and Technology Innovation Special Project [grant number 2022KJCXZX-ZHS-3].