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POLLEN STERILITY, a novel suppressor of cell division, is required for timely tapetal programmed cell death in rice

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Abstract

Timely programmed cell death (PCD) of the tapetum supplying nutrients to microspores is a prerequisite for normal pollen development. Here we identified a unique mutant of rice (Oryza sativa L.), pollen sterility (post), which showed aborted pollens accompanied with extra-large husks. Due to failure of timely PCD of tapetal cells, post exhibited abnormal pollen wall patterning and defective pollen grains. By map-based cloning, we identified a causal gene, POST, encoding a novel protein which is ubiquitously localized in cells. RNA in situ hybridization showed that POST is highly detected in the tapetum and microspores at stages 8 and 9. Transcriptome analysis indicated that POST could function as an important regulator of the metabolic process involved in tapetal PCD. Compared with wild-type rice, post mutant has an increased cell number resulting from elevated expression of cell cycle associated genes in grain husks. Overexpression of POST inhibits grain size in wild type, while appropriate expression of POST in post mutant can recover the seed fertility but has little effect on the large grains, illustrating that fine-tuning of POST expression could be a potential strategy for rice yield improvement. The connection between cell division and cell death conferred by POST provides novel insights into the understanding of the tapetal PCD process.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31801338), and the Major Program of Guangdong Basic and Applied Research (2019B030302006).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Plant Genomics, Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, the Innovative Academy for Seed Design, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China

    Ronghui Che, Bin Hu, Wei Wang, Yunhua Xiao & Chengcai Chu

  2. National Key Facility for Crop Gene Resources and Genetic Improvement, Institute of Crop Sciences, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, 100081, China

    Dapu Liu, Wenchao Yin & Hongning Tong

  3. School of Biological and Science Technology, University of Jinan, Jinan, 250022, China

    Ronghui Che

  4. College of Agriculture, South China Agricultural University, Guangzhou, 510642, China

    Bin Hu & Wei Wang

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  1. Ronghui Che
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  2. Bin Hu
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  3. Wei Wang
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  4. Yunhua Xiao
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Correspondence to Hongning Tong or Chengcai Chu.

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Che, R., Hu, B., Wang, W. et al. POLLEN STERILITY, a novel suppressor of cell division, is required for timely tapetal programmed cell death in rice. Sci. China Life Sci. 65, 1235–1247 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11427-021-2011-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11427-021-2011-2

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