ATHB17 is a positive regulator of abscisic acid response during early seedling growth

We performed activation tagging screen to isolate abscisic acid (ABA) response mutants. One of the mutants, designated ahs10 ( ABA-hypersensitive 10 ), exhibited ABA-hypersensitive phenotypes. TAIL-PCR analysis of the mutant revealed that T-DNA was inserted in the promoter region of the Arabidopsis gene, At2g01430, which encodes a homeodomain-leucine zipper protein ATHB17. Subsequent expression analysis indicated that ATHB17 was activated in ahs10 . To recapitulate the mutant phenotypes, we prepared ATHB17 OX lines and investigated their phenotypes. The results showed that ATHB17 confers ABA-hypersensitivity and drought tolerance. On the contrary, ATHB17 knockout lines were ABA-insensitive and drought-sensitive, further demonstrating that ATHB17 is involved in ABA and water-stress responses. Interestingly, the ATHB17 effect on seedling growth in the presence of ABA was observed only during the postgermination seedling establishment stage, suggesting that it functions during a narrow developmental window of early seedling growth.