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Spontaneous mutations of the UDP-glucose:flavonoid 3-O-glucosyltransferase gene confers pale- and dull-colored flowers in the Japanese and common morning glories

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Abstract

Main conclusion

UDP-glucose:flavonoid 3- O -glucosyltransferase is essential for maintaining proper production quantity, acylation, and glucosylation of anthocyanin, and defects cause pale and dull flower pigmentation in morning glories.

The Japanese (Ipomoea nil) and the common (I. purpurea) morning glory display bright blue and dark purple flowers, respectively. These flowers contain acylated and glucosylated anthocyanin pigments, and a number of flower color mutants have been isolated in I. nil. Of these, the duskish mutants of I. nil produce pale- and dull-colored flowers. We found that the Duskish gene encodes UDP-glucose:flavonoid 3-O-glucosyltransferase (3GT). The duskish-1 mutation is a frameshift mutation caused by a 4-bp insertion, and duskish-2 is an insertion of a DNA transposon, Tpn10, at 1.3 kb upstream of the 3GT start codon. In the duskish-2 mutant, excision of Tpn10 is responsible for restoration of the expression of the 3GT gene. The recombinant 3GT protein displays expected 3GT enzymatic activities to catalyze 3-O-glucosylation of anthocyanidins in vitro. Anthocyanin analysis of a duskish-2 mutant and its germinal revertant showing pale and normal pigmented flowers, respectively, revealed that the mutation caused around 80 % reduction of anthocyanin accumulation. We further characterized two I. purpurea mutants showing pale brownish-red flowers, and found that they carry the same frameshift mutation in the 3GT gene. Most of the flower anthocyanins in the mutants were previously found to be anthocyanidin 3-O-glucosides lacking several caffeic acid and glucose moieties that are attached to the anthocyanins in the wild-type plants. These results indicated that 3GT is essential not only for production, but also for proper acylation and glucosylation, of anthocyanin in the morning glories.

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Abbreviations

3GT:

UDP-glucose:flavonoid 3-O-glucosyltransferase

5GT:

Anthocyanin 5-O-glucosyltransferase

F3′H:

Flavonoid 3′-hydroxylase

qRT-PCR:

Quantitative reverse transcription-PCR

TKS:

Tokyo-kokei standard

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Acknowledgments

We thank Dr. Norio Saito for his participation in valuable discussions, Miwako Matsumoto, Chisato Matsuda, Ryoko Nakamura, Tomoyo Takeuchi, and Kazuyo Ito for their technical assistance, and the NIBB Model Plant Research Facility and the NIBB Functional Genomics Facility for the technical support. We also thank the National Bioresource Project Morning Glory and Dr. Eiji Nitasaka for Ipomoea seeds. This work was supported by grants, Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (No. 17207002 to S. I. and No. 18770041 to A. H.) from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Institute for Basic Biology, Okazaki, 444-8585, Japan

    Yasumasa Morita, Shigeru Iida & Atsushi Hoshino

  2. Faculty of Agriculture, Meijo University, Kasugai, 486-0804, Japan

    Yasumasa Morita

  3. Suntory Global Innovation Center Ltd., Mishima, 618-8503, Japan

    Kanako Ishiguro & Yoshikazu Tanaka

  4. Graduate School of Nutritional and Environmental Sciences, Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Shizuoka, Shizuoka, 422-8526, Japan

    Shigeru Iida

  5. Department of Basic Biology, SOKENDAI (The Graduate University for Advanced Studies), Okazaki, 444-8585, Japan

    Atsushi Hoshino

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  1. Yasumasa Morita
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  2. Kanako Ishiguro
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  3. Yoshikazu Tanaka
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  4. Shigeru Iida
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Correspondence to Yasumasa Morita or Atsushi Hoshino.

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Special topic: Polyphenols: biosynthesis and function in plants and ecosystems. Guest editor: Stefan Martens.

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Morita, Y., Ishiguro, K., Tanaka, Y. et al. Spontaneous mutations of the UDP-glucose:flavonoid 3-O-glucosyltransferase gene confers pale- and dull-colored flowers in the Japanese and common morning glories. Planta 242, 575–587 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00425-015-2321-5

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