Global analysis of gene expression in flower buds of Ms-cd1 Brassica oleracea conferring male sterility by using an Arabidopsis microarray

Abstract

The dominant male sterility gene Ms-cd1 is identified in Brassica oleracea. Electron microscopical observations revealed that abortion of pollen development starts after tetrad formation. This important male sterility phenotype is characterized by lack of degradation of the primary pollen mother cell (PMC) wall and delayed degradation of callose surrounding the tetrads and thus arrest of microspore release. Gene expression of the male sterile and fertile buds was analyzed by heterologous hybridization of Brassica oleracea cRNA onto an Arabidopsis whole genome oligonucleotide microarray. A total of 277 suppressed genes including 40 kinase-, 32 cell wall modification and 29 transport related genes were found to be significantly down regulated [3-fold in the male sterile mutant. The vast majority of the differentially expressed transcripts are found to present late pollen stage specific genes. Kinase genes, cell wall modification genes and ion transport genes were greatly over-represented when compared to their percentage of all flower bud expressed genes and represent 36.5% of the genes suppressed by Ms-cd1. Our results also suggest that Ms-cd1 may blocks an anther developmental pathway with a small number of genes suppressed in tapetum cells which prevent the degradation of callose and PMC wall, which further leads to the suppression of a large number of genes involved in signaling pathways, cell wall modification and ion transport in pollen grains.

BoPMEI1, a pollen-specific pectin methylesterase inhibitor, has an essential role in pollen tube growth

“…1a). All of these elements are also present in the promoter sequences of At1g10770, AtPMEI1 and AtPMEI2, which are all pollen-preferential genes (Wolf et al 2003;Kang et al 2008). Two CAAT boxes and a TATA box were also present in this region.…”

“…The transgenic plants obtained were used for detecting GUS activity as described (Jefferson et al 1987). Histochemical analysis of anther transverse sections was performed as described by Kang et al (2008).…”

“…Reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) Total RNA was isolated from different organs and flower tissues at various developmental stages, and cDNA was synthesized as described by Kang et al (2008). Semiquantitative RT-PCR analysis was conducted using the gene-specific primers described above (BoPMEI1F and BoPMEI1R).…”

Microarray analysis of differentially expressed genes between Brassica napus strains with high- and low-oleic acid contents

“…This was followed by the study of Horvath et al (2003), demonstrating that an Arabidopsis cDNA microarray can also be applied to plants with more distant phylogenetic relationships, such as wild oats (Avena fatua), deltoides (Populus deltoides), and other plants. In recent years, this technology has been used to reveal various aspects of oilseed rape molecular biology, including oil content (Fu et al 2009), disease resistance (Liu et al 2005), seed coat characteristics (Jiang and Deyholos 2010), and male sterility (Kang et al 2008). Collectively, these reports indicated the feasibility of using the Arabidopsis cDNA microarray to study oilseed rape.…”

Analyses of Advanced Rice Anther Transcriptomes Reveal Global Tapetum Secretory Functions and Potential Proteins for Lipid Exine Formation

“…Nevertheless, genes controlling the development of various anther cell layers in Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana), maize (Zea mays), rice (Oryza sativa), and lotus (Lotus japonicus) have been examined with use of flower or anther transcriptomes obtained from DNA microarrays (Amagai et al, 2003;Wang et al, 2005;Ma et al, 2006Ma et al, , 2007Masuko et al, 2006;Alves-Ferreira et al, 2007;Carlsson et al, 2007;Chen et al, 2007;Wijeratne et al, 2007;Kang et al, 2008). Some of these studies were made with comparisons between wild types and anther mutants.…”