Inactivation of the UGPase1 gene causes genic male sterility and endosperm chalkiness in rice (Oryza sativa L.)

doi:10.1111/j.1365-313X.2008.03405.x

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Wiley InterScience

The Plant Journal

Volume 54 Issue 2, Pages 190 - 204

Published Online: 8 Jan 2008

Published in association with the Society for Experimental Biology

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Inactivation of the UGPase1 gene causes genic male sterility and endosperm chalkiness in rice (Oryza sativa L.)

Mi-Ok Woo ¹ , Tae-Ho Ham ¹ , Hyeon-So Ji ² , Min-Seon Choi ¹ , Wenzhu Jiang ¹ , Sang-Ho Chu ¹ , Rihua Piao ¹ , Joong-Hyoun Chin ³ , Jung-A Kim ⁴ , Bong Soo Park ¹ , Hak Soo Seo ¹ , Nam-Soo Jwa ⁴ , Susan McCouch ⁵ and Hee-Jong Koh ^1,*

¹ Department of Plant Science and Research Institute of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Seoul National University, Seoul 151-921, Korea ,
² National Institute of Agricultural Biotechnology, RDA, Suwon 441-707, Korea ,
³ IRRI, Los Banos, Philippines ,
⁴ Department of Molecular Biology, College of Natural Science, Sejong University, Seoul 143-747, Korea , and
⁵ Department of Plant Breeding and Genetics, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853-1901, USA

Correspondence to *(fax +82 2 873 2056; e-mail heejkoh@snu.ac.kr).

Re-use of this article is permitted in accordance with the Creative Commons Deed, Attribution 2.5, which does not permit commercial exploitation.

KEYWORDS

Oryza sativa • genic male sterility • chalky endosperm • UGPase1 • RNAi • complementation test

ABSTRACT

A rice genic male-sterility gene ms-h is recessive and has a pleiotropic effect on the chalky endosperm. After fine mapping, nucleotide sequencing analysis of the ms-h gene revealed a single nucleotide substitution at the 3'-splice junction of the 14th intron of the UDP-glucose pyrophosphorylase 1 (UGPase1; EC2.7.7.9) gene, which causes the expression of two mature transcripts with abnormal sizes caused by the aberrant splicing. An in vitro functional assay showed that both proteins encoded by the two abnormal transcripts have no UGPase activity. The suppression of UGPase by the introduction of a UGPase1-RNAi construct in wild-type plants nearly eliminated seed set because of the male defect, with developmental retardation similar to the ms-h mutant phenotype, whereas overexpression of UGPase1 in ms-h mutant plants restored male fertility and the transformants produced T₁ seeds that segregated into normal and chalky endosperms. In addition, both phenotypes were co-segregated with the UGPase1 transgene in segregating T₁ plants, which demonstrates that UGPase1 has functional roles in both male sterility and the development of a chalky endosperm. Our results suggest that UGPase1 plays a key role in pollen development as well as seed carbohydrate metabolism.