International Journal of Molecular Sciences Article CaDHN3, a Pepper (Capsicum annuum L.) Dehydrin Gene Enhances the Tolerance against Salt and Drought Stresses by Reducing ROS Accumulation Yuan-Cheng Meng 1,†, Hua-Feng Zhang 1,†, Xiao-Xiao Pan 1,†, Nan Chen 1, Hui-Fang Hu 1, Saeed ul Haq 1,2, Abid Khan 1,3 and Ru-Gang Chen 1,4,* 1 College of Horticulture, Northwest A&F University, Yangling 712100, China;
[email protected] (Y.-C.M.);
[email protected] (H.-F.Z.);
[email protected] (X.-X.P.);
[email protected] (N.C.);
[email protected] (H.-F.H.);
[email protected] (S.u.H.);
[email protected] (A.K.) 2 Department of Horticulture, The University of Agriculture Peshawar, Peshawar 25130, Pakistan 3 Department of Horticulture, The University of Haripur, Haripur 22620, Pakistan 4 Shaanxi Engineering Research Center for Vegetables, Yangling 712100, China * Correspondence:
[email protected]; Tel./Fax: +86-29-8708-2613 † These authors contribute equally to this work. Abstract: Dehydrins (DHNs) play an important role in abiotic stress tolerance in a large number of plants, but very little is known about the function of DHNs in pepper plants. Here, we isolated a Y1SK2-type DHN gene “CaDHN3” from pepper. To authenticate the function of CaDHN3 in salt and Citation: Meng, Y.-C.; Zhang, H.-F.; drought stresses, it was overexpressed in Arabidopsis and silenced in pepper through virus-induced Pan, X.-X.; Chen, N.; Hu, H.-F.; Haq, gene silencing (VIGS). Sub-cellular localization showed that CaDHN3 was located in the nucleus S.u.; Khan, A.; Chen, R.-G.