OsAT1, an anion transporter, negatively regulates grain size and yield in rice

Abstract

Improving the grain yield of rice is a central goal of basic and applied scientific research. Here, we identified an anion transporter, OsAT1, localized in the endoplasmic reticulum and Golgi. OsAT1 is highly expressed in flag, stem, and sheath as monitored using qRT‐PCR and pOsAT1::GUS. Thousand‐grain weight, grain weight per plant, and content of starch were significantly increased in OsAT1 knock‐down mutants (OsAT1‐Ri) but significantly decreased in OsAT1 overexpressed lines (OsAT1‐OE). In addition, the grain weight per plant increased by 6.17% to 6.78% in OsAT1‐RNAi lines, whereas it decreased by 45.93% to 46.76% in OsAT1‐OE lines, compared to wild‐type. Moreover, the copper content was noticeably reduced in flag leaf of OsAT1‐Ri lines and increased in OsAT1‐OE lines. RNA‐sequencing analysis of OsAT1‐OE lines revealed that the genes related to starch biosynthesis and metabolism pathway were enriched in the down‐regulated category. Thus, our results suggest that knock‐down of OsAT1 in rice possibly reduces copper accumulation and improves the accumulation of storage starch, hence, increasing the grain size and weight. OsAT1 may be a useful gene to consider for cereal breeding programs.

Multiomic insights into sucrose accumulation in sugarcane

“…Notably, for Pop1, we identified GWAS-associated SNPs surrounding genes annotated for anion transporters, FAR1 proteins, and serine/threonine-protein kinases. These genes play pivotal roles in balancing growth and stress responses (Zheng et al 2010; Ramesh et al 2015; Liu et al 2019; Jiang et al 2022) and have potential implications for carbohydrate synthesis (Ma et al 2017; Luo et al 2020; Liu et al 2022). Furthermore, our GWAS of Pop2 revealed a gene annotated for a pentatricopeptide repeat-containing (PPR) protein, which has also been implicated in both plant development and stress response pathways (Liu et al 2017; Pimenta et al 2023).…”

Heat Stress Responsive Aux/IAA Protein, OsIAA29 Regulates Grain Filling Through OsARF17 Mediated Auxin Signaling Pathway

“…The 35S::Ghd7-CFP was used as a nuclear localization marker (Xue et al 2008 ). Then, the plasmids were co-transformed into rice protoplasts according to the method (Shen et al 2017 ; Liu et al 2022 ). The confocal laser scanning microscope (TCS SP8, Leica, Wetzlar, Germany) was used to detect fluorescent signals.…”

Rice miR5504 regulates plant height by affecting cell proliferation and expansion

“…DESeq2 in R was used to identify the differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between the mir5504 and NIP. The pathways enriched among the DEGs, defined as those with an expression change >1.5‐fold with p ‐value <0.05, were identified using the GOseq software (Liu et al, 2022a).…”

“…The sgRNA was amplified and then cloned into a binary vector pYLCRISPR‐Cas9Pubi‐B (kindly provided by professor Yaoguang Liu, South China Agricultural University, Guangzhou, China) to generate pCRISPR‐miR5504 (Liu et al, 2022b; Ma & Liu, 2016; Wang et al, 2020). To generate the over‐expression plants, the precursor sequence of miR5504 was amplified (see primers in Table S1) and cloned into the pYL‐OX vector that was driven by a maize ubiquitin promoter (Liu et al, 2022a). The recombinant plasmids, verified by DNA sequencing, were transferred into NIP through Agrobacterium tumefaciens ‐mediated transformation using the EHA105 strain.…”