Increased Cuticle Waxes by Overexpression of WSD1 Improves Osmotic Stress Tolerance in Arabidopsis thaliana and Camelina sativa

To ensure global food security under the changing climate, there is a strong need for developing ‘climate resilient crops’ that can thrive and produce better yields under extreme environmental conditions such as drought, salinity, and high temperature. To enhance plant productivity under the adverse conditions, we constitutively overexpressed a bifunctional wax synthase/acyl-CoA:diacylglycerol acyltransferase (WSD1) gene, which plays a critical role in wax ester synthesis in Arabidopsis stem and leaf tissues. The qRT-PCR analysis showed a strong upregulation of WSD1 transcripts by mannitol, NaCl, and abscisic acid (ABA) treatments, particularly in Arabidopsis thaliana shoots. Gas chromatography and electron microscopy analyses of Arabidopsis seedlings overexpressing WSD1 showed higher deposition of epicuticular wax crystals and increased leaf and stem wax loading in WSD1 transgenics compared to wildtype (WT) plants. WSD1 transgenics exhibited enhanced tolerance to ABA, mannitol, drought and salinity, which suggested new physiological roles for WSD1 in stress response aside from its wax synthase activity. Transgenic plants were able to recover from drought and salinity better than the WT plants. Furthermore, transgenics showed reduced cuticular transpirational rates and cuticle permeability, as well as less chlorophyll leaching than the WT. The knowledge from Arabidopsis was translated to the oilseed crop Camelina sativa (L.) Crantz. Similar to Arabidopsis, transgenic Camelina lines overexpressing WSD1 also showed enhanced tolerance to drought stress. Our results clearly show that the manipulation of cuticular waxes will be advantageous for enhancing plant productivity under a changing climate.

Detailed characterization of the substrate specificity of mouse wax synthase.

Wax synthases are membrane-associated enzymes catalysing the esterification reaction between fatty acyl-CoA and a long chain fatty alcohol. In living organisms, wax esters function as storage materials or provide protection against harmful environmental influences. In industry, they are used as ingredients for the production of lubricants, pharmaceuticals, and cosmetics. Currently the biological sources of wax esters are limited to jojoba oil. In order to establish a large-scale production of desired wax esters in transgenic high-yielding oilseed plants, enzymes involved in wax esters synthesis from different biological resources should be characterized in detail taking into consideration their substrate specificity. Therefore, this study aims at determining the substrate specificity of one of such enzymes -- the mouse wax synthase. The gene encoding this enzyme was expressed heterologously in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. In the in vitro assays (using microsomal fraction from transgenic yeast), we evaluated the preferences of mouse wax synthase towards a set of combinations of 11 acyl-CoAs with 17 fatty alcohols. The highest activity was observed for 14:0-CoA, 12:0-CoA, and 16:0-CoA in combination with medium chain alcohols (up to 5.2, 3.4, and 3.3 nmol wax esters/min/mg microsomal protein, respectively). Unsaturated alcohols longer than 18°C were better utilized by the enzyme in comparison to the saturated ones. Combinations of all tested alcohols with 20:0-CoA, 22:1-CoA, or Ric-CoA were poorly utilized by the enzyme, and conjugated acyl-CoAs were not utilized at all. Apart from the wax synthase activity, mouse wax synthase also exhibited a very low acyl-CoA:diacylglycerol acyltransferase activity. However, it displayed neither acyl-CoA:monoacylglycerol acyltransferase, nor acyl-CoA:sterol acyltransferase activity.