Improving cold stress tolerance of plants by spatiotemporal modulation of tapetal autophagy

2016 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 15K21450
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Crop production science; Plant nutrition/Soil science
• Research Institution: Tokyo University of Technology
• Principal Investigator: KURUSU Takamitsu 東京工科大学, 応用生物学部, 助教 (50422499)
• Project Period (FY): 2015-04-01 – 2017-03-31
• Keywords: オートファジー / イネ / タペート細胞 / 花粉 / 温度ストレス / 転写制御 / プログラム細胞死

Outline of Final Research Achievements

We established an in vivo imaging system to analyze the dynamics of autophagic flux in rice tapetum cells by expressing a marker of autophagosomes (GFP-ATG8) under the control of multiple tapetum-specific promoters, and revealed the dynamics of autophagy during pollen maturation. We comprehensively analyzed the effect of autophagy disruption on phytohormone contents in rice anthers at the flowering stage, and found that endogenous levels of active-forms of gibberellins (GAs) were significantly lower in the autophagy-defective mutant than in the wild type, indicating that autophagy affects metabolism and endogenous levels of GAs in rice anthers. We also suggested the possible involvement of reactive oxygen species (ROS)-mediated signaling and the EAT1 transcriptional network in the regulation of autophagy and the proper timing of tapetal programmed cell death during anther development.

Free Research Field

植物栄養生理学