International Journal of Molecular Sciences Article A Novel DUF569 Gene Is a Positive Regulator of the Drought Stress Response in Arabidopsis Rizwana Begum Syed Nabi 1,2,†, Rupesh Tayade 1,† , Adil Hussain 3 , Arjun Adhikari 1 , In-Jung Lee 1, Gary J. Loake 4,* and Byung-Wook Yun 1,* 1 School of Applied Biosciences, Kyungpook National University, Daegu 41566, Korea;
[email protected] (R.B.S.N.);
[email protected] (R.T.);
[email protected] (A.A.);
[email protected] (I.-J.L.) 2 Department of Southern Area Crop Science, National Institute of Crop Science, Rural Development Administration, Miryang 50424, Korea 3 Department of Agriculture, Abdul Wali Khan University, Mardan 230200, Pakistan;
[email protected] 4 Institute of Molecular Plant Sciences, School of Biological Sciences, University of Edinburgh, King’s Buildings, Edinburgh EH9 3JH, UK * Correspondence:
[email protected] (G.J.L.);
[email protected] (B.-W.Y.) † These authors contributed equally to this work. Abstract: In the last two decades, global environmental change has increased abiotic stress on plants and severely affected crops. For example, drought stress is a serious abiotic stress that rapidly and substantially alters the morphological, physiological, and molecular responses of plants. In Arabidopsis, several drought-responsive genes have been identified; however, the underlying molecular mechanism of drought tolerance in plants remains largely unclear. Here, we report that the Citation: Nabi, R.B.S.; Tayade, R.; “domain of unknown function” novel gene DUF569 (AT1G69890) positively regulates drought stress Hussain, A.; Adhikari, A.; Lee, I.-J.; in Arabidopsis. The Arabidopsis loss-of-function mutant atduf569 showed significant sensitivity Loake, G.J.; Yun, B.-W.