Roles of autophagy in the life cycle of rice

2015 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 24380037
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B)
• Allocation Type: Partial Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Plant nutrition/Soil science
• Research Institution: Tohoku University
• Principal Investigator: Ishida Hiroyuki 東北大学, (連合)農学研究科(研究院), 准教授 (60312625)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): MAKINO Amane 東北大学, 大学院農学研究科, 教授 (70181617)
• Project Period (FY): 2012-04-01 – 2016-03-31
• Keywords: オートファジー / 窒素転流 / 栄養成長 / 生殖成長 / イネ

Outline of Final Research Achievements

We aimed to reveal roles of autophagy in the life cycle of rice and obtained following results. (1) We isolated autophagy-defective rice mutants. (2) We established monitoring methods for autophagy by generating transgenic rice expressing fluorescent protein markers. (3) We found that autophagy-defective rice mutants show delayed reproductive growth and heading and they show male sterile phenotype due to incomplete development of pollen and anther. (4) We found that autophagy-defective rice mutants show reduced biomass production and nitrogen use efficiency due to suppression of chloroplast protein degradation and nitrogen remobilisation.

Free Research Field

植物栄養生理学