Recently, Functional Genomics for Crop Efficient Photosynthesis team from Joint functional genomics laboratory for crop photosynthetic enhancement, Biotechnology ResearchInstitute, reported a new mechanism that changing leaf morphogenesis improves photosynthetic efficiency of rice. Research result has published online on the international mainstream botanical journal, Plant Biotechnology Journal , on 19th, Jun 2020.
It is the pursued goal for geneticists and breeders to breed high photosynthetic efficiency material of rice. It is known that changing leaf morphogenesis to increase the whole light-receiving space and to improve ventilation condition, can enhance botanic photosynthetic efficiency and biomass, but the detailed mechanism of molecular regulation is still unknown.
In this project, researchers comprehensively utilizing various means including molecular genetics, cell biology, biochemistry and so on, discover a new mechanism that transcriptional factor Roc8 regulates leaf morphogenesis and then affects photosynthesis. Furthermore, the 50-nt sequence in the 3’-untranslated region (3’-UTR) of the Roc8 gene has post-transcriptional regulating function, and represses Roc8 at the translational level, and the 50-nt sequence forms a special stem-loop structure, and has the terminator function like poly(A). Previously, our laboratory reported that Roc5 negatively regulates the number and size of bulliform cells, and then affects leaf morphogenesis and photosynthesis(Zou et al., Plant Physiology，2011).In this paper, two knockdown lines created by CRISPR/Cas9 technology significantly enhance photosynthetic efficiency and biomass, which is promising to produce high photosynthetic efficiency material using HD-ZIP IV gene family of rice, and the research result can be used for reference to produce high photosynthetic efficiency material of monocotyledons and dicotyledons plant.
This project was supported in part by NSFC-CGIAR(31861143006) and Innovation Project ofChinese Academy of Agricultural Science.
Figure: Phenotypic comparison of crm1-D and wild-type plants
More information can be found through the link:
https://doi.org/10.1111/pbi.13435
https://doi.org/10.1104/pp.111.176016
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