Barley’s Second Spring as a Model Organism for Chloroplast Research

Abstract

<jats:p>Barley (Hordeum vulgare) has been widely used as a model crop for studying molecular and physiological processes such as chloroplast development and photosynthesis. During the second half of the 20th century, mutants such as albostrians led to the discovery of the nuclear-encoded, plastid-localized RNA polymerase and the retrograde (chloroplast-to-nucleus) signalling communication pathway, while chlorina-f2 and xantha mutants helped to shed light on the chlorophyll biosynthetic pathway, on the light-harvesting proteins and on the organization of the photosynthetic apparatus. However, during the last 30 years, a large fraction of chloroplast research has switched to the more “user-friendly” model species Arabidopsis thaliana, the first plant species whose genome was sequenced and published at the end of 2000. Despite its many advantages, Arabidopsis has some important limitations compared to barley, including the lack of a real canopy and the absence of the proplastid-to-chloroplast developmental gradient across the leaf blade. These features, together with the availability of large collections of natural genetic diversity and mutant populations for barley, a complete genome assembly and protocols for genetic transformation and gene editing, have relaunched barley as an ideal model species for chloroplast research. In this review, we provide an update on the genomics tools now available for barley, and review the biotechnological strategies reported to increase photosynthesis efficiency in model species, which deserve to be validated in barley.</jats:p>

The Arabidopsis AAC Proteins CIL and CIA2 Are Sub-functionalized Paralogs Involved in Chloroplast Development

“…Impaired plastid translation leads to retrograde signaling affecting the expression of many nuclear genes, mainly those involved in the control of photosynthesis and stress response ( Chan et al, 2016 ; Kleine and Leister, 2016 ; Crawford et al, 2018 ; Dietz et al, 2019 ; Zhao et al, 2020 ; Wu and Bock, 2021 ). Retrograde signaling has been analyzed in Hvcmf7 ( albostrians ; Börner, 2017 ; Rotasperti et al, 2020 ). It needs still to be investigated if retrograde signaling may also have effects on the expression of nuclear genes in cia2 , cil , and Hvcmf3 and affect the phenotype of the mutants.…”

The Arabidopsis AAC Proteins CIL and CIA2 Are Sub-functionalized Paralogs involved in Chloroplast Development

“…Retrograde signaling has been analyzed in Hvcmf7 (albostrians) (Börner, 2017;Rotasperti et al, 2020). It needs still to be investigated if retrograde signaling may also have effects on the expression of nuclear genes in Atcia2, Atcil and Hvcmf3 and affect the phenotype of the mutants.…”

Genome editing in cereal crops: an overview

“…In 2012 the International Barley Genome Sequencing Consortium published the first reference genome derived from the cultivar Morex (Mayer et al 2012) which has since been improved in sequence depth, genome assembly and annotation (Mascher et al 2017;Monat et al 2019) and can be accessed via http://barleysequence.org/. A recent overview on barley and its role as a model species can be found in (Rotasperti et al 2020).…”