A PSTOL-like gene, TaPSTOL, controls a number of agronomically important traits in wheat

Abstract

BackgroundPhosphorus (P) is an essential macronutrient for plant growth, and is required in large quantities by elite varieties of crops to maintain yields. Approximately 70% of global cultivated land suffers from P deficiency, and it has recently been estimated that worldwide P resources will be exhausted by the end of this century, increasing the demand for crops more efficient in their P usage. A greater understanding of how plants are able to maintain yield with lower P inputs is, therefore, highly desirable to both breeders and farmers. Here, we clone the wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) homologue of the rice PSTOL gene (OsPSTOL), and characterize its role in phosphate nutrition plus other agronomically important traits.ResultsTaPSTOL is a single copy gene located on the short arm of chromosome 5A, encoding a putative kinase protein, and shares a high level of sequence similarity to OsPSTOL. We re-sequenced TaPSTOL from 24 different wheat accessions and (3) three T. durum varieties. No sequence differences were detected in 26 of the accessions, whereas two indels were identified in the promoter region of one of the durum wheats. We characterised the expression of TaPSTOL under different P concentrations and demonstrated that the promoter was induced in root tips and hairs under P limiting conditions. Overexpression and RNAi silencing of TaPSTOL in transgenic wheat lines showed that there was a significant effect upon root biomass, flowering time independent of P treatment, tiller number and seed yield, correlating with the expression of TaPSTOL. However this did not increase PUE as elevated P concentration in the grain did not correspond to increased yields.ConclusionsManipulation of TaPSTOL expression in wheat shows it is responsible for many of the previously described phenotypic advantages as OsPSTOL except yield. Furthermore, we show TaPSTOL contributes to additional agronomically important traits including flowering time and grain size. Analysis of TaPSTOL sequences from a broad selection of wheat varieties, encompassing 91% of the genetic diversity in UK bread wheat, showed that there is very little genetic variation in this gene, which would suggest that this locus may have been under high selection pressure.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s12870-018-1331-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Identification of genetic factors controlling phosphorus utilization efficiency in wheat by genome-wide association study with principal component analysis

“…Similarly, for P efficiency, efforts were made to improve P use efficiency in wheat based on the information from rice. Milner et al recently cloned TaPSTOL gene (an orthologous gene of rice PSTOL1) and investigated its effects on wheat under various P supply conditions (Milner et al 2018). They observed that the expression of TaPSTOL was higher in root tips and hairs under limited P supply and the overexpression or silencing significantly impacted agronomic traits.…”

A wheat NAC interacts with an orphan protein and enhances resistance to Fusarium head blight disease

“…Transformants were selected as previously described (Perochon et al ., ). For each T0 transformants, the T‐DNA copy number was determined using a qPCR assay (1 copy in lines OE‐1 and OE‐3, 2 copies in line OE‐4 and 3 copies in line OE‐2) as described by (Milner et al ., ) and confirmed for the presence of the transgene insert by PCR amplification of a fragment of TaNACL‐D1 and the NOS (nopaline synthase) terminator (primers listed in Table S1). Plants were grown to the T 4 generation, and at each generation, leaf tissue samples were collected from the overexpression lines to check the presence of T‐DNA and to analyze the segregation ratio to identify homozygous lines.…”

“…Relatively few plant orphan genes have been studied in depth. Recent studies revealed that orphan genes are important players in key agronomic traits, including Ms2 that confers male sterility in wheat (Ni et al, 2017), QQS (Qua-Quine Starch) that regulates carbon and nitrogen partitioning across species and TaFROG (Triticum aestivum Fusarium Resistance Orphan Gene) that enhances wheat resistance to disease .…”

Efficient generation of stable, heritable gene edits in wheat using CRISPR/Cas9

“…T-DNA copy number was determined using a TaqMan relative quantification (ΔΔCT) assay comparing the relative values of an nptII amplicon to an amplicon of the single copy wheat gene GaMyb within a multiplexed reaction and normalised to a single copy control [ 39 ]. All reactions are carried out using two replicates per plant line.…”