ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Plant Abiotic Stress
This article is part of the Research TopicWoody Plants and Climate Resilience: Responses to Environmental Stress and Weather ExtremesView all articles
Transcriptome-wide Identification of the WUSCHEL-related homeobox (WOX) Transcription Factors and their Expression Patterns Underlying Drought and Salt Stress in Populus euphratica
Provisionally accepted
Boniface Ndayambaza1,2*
Jianhua Si2
Xin Zhao3Yingxue Zhao3
Dongmeng Zhou1,2Bing Jia1,2Zijin Liu1,2Xue Bai1,2Boyang Wang1,2- 1University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
- 2Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Lanzhou, China
- 3China Institutional Center for Shared Technologies and Facilities of NIEER, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou 730000, China, Lanzhou, China
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Abstract Drought and salinity are major abiotic stresses that severely affect plant growth and productivity of woody plants. The WUSCHEL-related homeobox (WOX) transcription factors are central to the regulation of plant development and plant stress responses, yet their roles in the stress-resilient desert tree Populus euphratica remain unexplored. Here, we performed a genome-wide study to identify and characterize the WOX gene family of P. euphratica species. A total of 18 PeuWOX genes were discovered and characterized phylogenetically as the modern, intermediate, and ancient clades. Members within each clade exhibited strong conservation in gene structure and protein motifs. Promoter analysis revealed a significant enrichment of stress-and hormone-responsive cis-elements. The 11 chosen PeuWOX genes were found to be differentially regulated by drought and salt stress in a tissue specific by expression patterns through qRT-PCR. In leaves, PeuWOX1, 2, 4, 5 genes were sharply downregulated under salt stress, while PeuWOX9, 10, 17 genes were significantly upregulated during prolonged drought or salt exposure. In roots and stems, PeuWOX5 and PeuWOX10 genes were induced rapidly, which may lead to a process of adaptation such as adventitious rooting, but PeuWOX4 and PeuWOX17 were induced over the long term associated with the development of the vascular system and long-term acclimation. Our results provided evidence that the PeuWOX family participates in a refined regulatory network, which fine-tunes stem, root and leaf development with response to abiotic stress. This study provides an important background to the molecular mechanisms of the exceptional resistance to stress across P. euphratica and provides candidate genes for improving stress tolerance of woody plants.
Keywords: and Expression Pattern, Drought stress, Populus euphratica, salt stress, Transcriptome-wide, WOX transcription factor family genes
Received: 16 Nov 2025; Accepted: 17 Dec 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Ndayambaza, Si, Zhao, Zhao, Zhou, Jia, Liu, Bai and Wang. 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: Boniface Ndayambaza
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