ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Plant Metabolism and Chemodiversity
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpls.2025.1629166
This article is part of the Research TopicMolecular Architects of the Green World: Genetic, Epigenetic, and Transcriptional Regulation of Plant Metabolism and Chemo-diversityView all 4 articles
Escaping Endogenous miRNA Post-Transcriptional Silencing of JrGRF4b
Provisionally accepted
- 1Chinese Academy of Forestry, Beijing, China
- 2College of Forestry, Northeast Forestry University, Harbin, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
The stable expression of transgenes was critically influenced by post-transcriptional regulatory mechanisms in transgenic plants. In this study, we investigated the influence of endogenous miRNA-mediated silencing on heterologous gene expression by introducing walnut (Juglans regia L.)-derived Growth-Regulating Factors 4 (JrGRF4b), disrupting miR396-mediated silencing of replace-JrGRF4b (rJrGRF4b), and Jr-miR396a into birch (Betula platyphylla Suk.). While JrGRF4b overexpression showed no significant improvement in transformation efficiency due to Bp-miR396-mediated suppression, transgenic lines expressing rJrGRF4b exhibited a 2.53% increase in transformation efficiency, along with significantly enhanced callus diameter, adventitious bud height, root elongation, cellular expansion, and shoot primordia proliferation compared to control (**p<0.01). In contrast, Jr-miR396a-overexpressing plants displayed growth inhibition through suppression of endogenous BpGRFs. The results showed that escaping endogenous miRNA regulation by targeted site modification of rJrGRF4b significantly improved transgene performance in woody plants. Thus, comprehensive evaluation of post-transcriptional epigenetic regulation between transgenes and endogenous miRNAs in recipient plants was demonstrated to be important, and targeted escape from such miRNA-mediated suppression was shown to ensure stable and high-efficiency transgene expression.
Keywords: Walnut, Birch, MiR396, Growth-regulating factors, Post-transcriptional regulatory, transgene
Received: 15 May 2025; Accepted: 26 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Li, Pan, Wu, Zheng and Pei. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Dong Pei, Chinese Academy of Forestry, Beijing, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.