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Differential expression and alternative splicing of rice sulphate transporter family members regulate sulphur status during plant growth, development and stress conditions

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Abstract

Sulphur, an essential nutrient required for plant growth and development, is mainly taken up by the plants as inorganic sulphate from the soil and assimilated into the sulphur reductive pathway. The uptake and transport of sulphate in plants is carried out by transporters encoded by the sulphate transporter gene family. Plant sulphate transporters have been classified with respect to their protein sequences, kinetic properties and tissue-specific localization in Arabidopsis. Though sulphate transporter genes from few other plants have also been characterized, no detailed study with respect to the structure and expression of this family from rice has been carried out. Here, we present genome-wide identification, structural and expression analyses of the rice sulphate transporter gene family. Our analysis using microarray data and MPSS database suggests that 14 rice sulphate transporters are differentially expressed during growth and development in various tissues and during biotic and abiotic stresses. Our analysis also suggests differential accumulation of splice variants of OsSultr1;1 and OsSultr4;1 transcripts during these processes. Apart from known spliced variants, we report an unusual alternative splicing of OsSultr1;1 transcript related to sulphur supply in growth medium and during stress response. Taken together, our study suggests that differential expression and alternative splicing of members of the sulphate transporter family plays an important role in regulating cellular sulphur status required for growth and development and during stress conditions. These findings significantly advance our understanding of the posttranscriptional regulatory mechanisms operating to regulate sulphur demand by the plant.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by a research grant from the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, New Delhi, as Network Project (NWP-19). The authors also acknowledge Rice Research Station, Chinsurah, West Bengal, for help in conducting field trials and providing seeds of different rice varieties.

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  1. National Botanical Research Institute, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Rana Pratap Marg, Lucknow, 226 001, India

    Smita Kumar, Mehar Hasan Asif, Debasis Chakrabarty, Rudra Deo Tripathi & Prabodh Kumar Trivedi

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  1. Smita Kumar
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  2. Mehar Hasan Asif
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  4. Rudra Deo Tripathi
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Correspondence to Prabodh Kumar Trivedi.

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Supplementary Table S1

List of oligonucleotide primers used for semiquantitative RT-PCR analysis (DOC 34 kb)

Supplementary Table S2

List of sulphate transporters identified in poplar, vitis and Arabidopsis (XLS 24 kb)

Supplementary Table S3

Conserved domains present in different sulphate transporters from rice and their possible roles and the location in the amino acid sequences. Different domains include STAS, Sulfate_transp, SUL1, PRK11660, SpoIIAA, COG2252, UraA and Xan_ur_permease (XLS 31 kb)

Supplementary Table S4

Rice sulphate transporter genes and their splice forms (DOC 51 kb)

Supplementary Table S5

Summary of rice microarray experiments from the GEO database used in this study (DOC 69 kb)

Supplementary Table S6

Identification of putative targets for miR395 in the rice sulphate transporter gene family (TXT 6 kb)

Supplementary Table S7

Differential expression of members of sulphate transporter gene family during abiotic stresses (DOC 48 kb)

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Kumar, S., Asif, M.H., Chakrabarty, D. et al. Differential expression and alternative splicing of rice sulphate transporter family members regulate sulphur status during plant growth, development and stress conditions. Funct Integr Genomics 11, 259–273 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10142-010-0207-y

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