Abstract
Key message
An unusual flower and tendril (uft) mutant in cucumber was caused by a mutation in Csa1G056950 encoding an F-box protein.
Abstract
Flowers and tendrils are important agronomic and yield traits of cucumber (Cucumis sativus L.). In this study, we identified an unusual flower and tendril (uft) mutant from an ethyl methanesulfonate (EMS) mutagenesis population. Genetic analysis revealed that the phenotype of the uft mutant was regulated by a single recessive nuclear gene. Map-based cloning and MutMap+ results demonstrated that Csa1G056950 (CsUFO), encoding an F-box protein, was the causal gene for the uft mutant phenotype of cucumber. A single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) mutation (C to T) in the second exon of CsUFO resulted in premature translation termination. The expression level of CsUFO was significantly decreased in apical buds of the uft mutant compared with the wild-type (WT) WD1. Transcriptome analysis indicated that many genes for organ development were down-regulated in uft plants, suggesting CsUFO-associated networks that regulate flower and tendril development. These findings provide a new insight into understanding the molecular mechanisms of flower organogenesis in cucumber.
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The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Dr. Pengbo Xu (Shanghai Jiao Tong University) for technical assistance in the experiment. This study was supported by the Shanghai Agriculture Applied Technology Development Program (2020-02-08-00-08-F0148), the Project of Science and Technology Commission of Shanghai Municipality (18391900300), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31972425), and the Agri-X Interdisciplinary Fund of Shanghai Jiao Tong University (Agri-X2017011).
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YC performed the experiments and prepared the manuscript. HW, JP and HD participated in the experiments. KZ, LZ and YY contributed to the writing of this paper. HH, RC and GW provided materials. JP and GW, the corresponding authors, supervised entire experimental process. All authors have read and approved the manuscript.
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Chen, Y., Wen, H., Pan, J. et al. CsUFO is involved in the formation of flowers and tendrils in cucumber. Theor Appl Genet 134, 2141–2150 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00122-021-03811-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00122-021-03811-4