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OsUGE1 is directly targeted by OsGRF6 to regulate root hair length in rice

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Abstract

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Root hairs are required for water and nutrient acquisition in plants. Here, we report a novel mechanism that OsUGE1 is negatively controlled by OsGRF6 to regulate root hair elongation in rice.

Abstract

Root hairs are tubular outgrowths generated by the root epidermal cells. They effectively enlarge the soil-root contact area and play essential roles for nutrient and water absorption. Here, in this study, we demonstrated that the Oryza sativa UDP-glucose 4-epimerase 1-like (OsUGE1) negatively regulated root hair elongation and was directly targeted by Oryza sativa growth regulating factor 6 (OsGRF6). Knockout mutants of OsUGE1 using CRISPR-Cas9 technology showed longer root hairs than those of wild type. In contrast, overexpression lines of OsUGE1 displayed shorter root hair compared with those of wild type. GUS staining showed that it could specifically express in root hair. Subcellular localization analysis indicates that OsUGE1 is located in endoplasmic reticulum, nucleus and plasma membrane. More importantly, ChIP-qPCR, Yeast-one-hybrid and BiFC experiments revealed that OsGRF6 could bind to the promoter of OsUGE1. Furthermore, knockout mutants of OsGRF6 showed shorter root hair than those of wild type, and OsGRF6 dominantly expressed in root. In addition, the expression level of OsUGE1 is significantly downregulated in Osgrf6 mutant. Taken together, our study reveals a novel pathway that OsUGE1 is negatively controlled by OsGRF6 to regulate root hair elongation in rice.

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All data are available upon request to the corresponding author.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Professor Kunming Chen (Northwest A&F University) and Associate Professor Wenqiang Li (Northwest A&F University) for providing the GFP vector, GUS reporter vector and overexpression vector. We also thank manager Weizhen Hu (Agricultural Experiment Station, Zhejiang University) who is responsible for the management of greenhouse.

Funding

The research was funded by the National Key R & D Program of China (2021YFF1000400) and Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. LZ22C130002).

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  1. Shuaiqi Yang and Nuo Xu have contribute equally to this paper.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Zhejiang Key Lab of Crop Germplasm, Department of Agronomy, College of Agriculture and Biotechnology, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310000, China

    Shuaiqi Yang, Nuo Xu, Nana Chen, Jiaxuan Qi, Abdul Salam, Junyu Wu, Linli Huang & Yinbo Gan

  2. College of Agriculture and Forestry Sciences, Linyi University, Linyi, 276000, Shandong, China

    Yihua Liu

  3. College of Agriculture, Hunan Agricultural University, Changsha, 410128, China

    Bohan Liu

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  1. Shuaiqi Yang
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Contributions

GY designed this research; YS, XN, CN, QJ, SA, WJ, LY, HL and LB performed the experiments; YS did the data analysis; GY and YS wrote the article.

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Correspondence to Yinbo Gan.

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Yang, S., Xu, N., Chen, N. et al. OsUGE1 is directly targeted by OsGRF6 to regulate root hair length in rice. Theor Appl Genet 136, 108 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00122-023-04356-4

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