title: Alteration of osa-miR156e expression affects rice plant architecture and strigolactones (SLs) pathway.
abstract: Overexpressing osa--miR156e in rice produced a bushy mutant and osa--miR156e regulation of tillering may do this through the strigolactones (SLs) pathway. Appropriate downregulation of osa--miR156 expression contributed to the improvement of plant architecture. Tillering is one of the main determinants for rice architecture and yield. In this study, a bushy mutant of rice was identified with increased tiller number, reduced plant height, prolonged heading date, low seed setting, and small panicle size due to a T-DNA insertion which essentially elevated the expression of osa-miR156e. Transgenic plants with constitutive expression of osa-miR156e also had the bushy phenotype, which showed osa-miR156 may control apical dominance and tiller outgrowth via regulating the strigolactones signaling pathway. Furthermore, the extent of impaired morphology was correlated with the expression level of osa-miR156e. In an attempt to genetically improve rice architecture, ectopic expression of osa-miR156e under the GAL4-UAS system or OsTB1 promoter was conducted. According to agronomic trait analysis, pTB1:osa-miR156e transgenic plants significantly improved the grain yield per plant compared to plants overexpressing osa-miR156e, even though the yield was still inferior to the wild type, making it a very interesting albeit negative result. Our results suggested that osa-miR156 could serve as a potential tool for modifying rice plant architecture through genetic manipulation of the osa-miR156 expression level.
authors.affiliation: National Key Laboratory of Crop Genetic Improvement and National Center of Plant Gene Research (Wuhan), Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, 430070, China, chenzhihui75@sina.com.
authors.forename: Zhihui
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Xinqiang
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Gao
authors.forename: Jian
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zhang
mesh_terms: D001483:Base Sequence; D004269:DNA, Bacterial; D015870:Gene Expression; D018506:Gene Expression Regulation, Plant; D017930:Genes, Reporter; D005838:Genotype; D007783:Lactones; D035683:MicroRNAs / Q000235:genetics*; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D016254:Mutagenesis, Insertional; D012275:Oryza / Q000033:anatomy & histology / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism; D010641:Phenotype; D010940:Plant Proteins / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism; D030821:Plants, Genetically Modified; D011401:Promoter Regions, Genetic; D017423:Sequence Analysis, RNA
chemical_list: D004269:DNA, Bacterial; D007783:Lactones; D035683:MicroRNAs; D010940:Plant Proteins; C036483:T-DNA