Abstract
Grain size is a major determinant of grain yield in cereal crops. qSW5/GW5, which exerts the greatest effect on rice grain width and weight, was fine-mapped to a 2,263-bp/21-kb genomic region containing a 1,212-bp deletion, respectively. Here, we show that a gene encoding a calmodulin binding protein, located ∼5 kb downstream of the 1,212-bp deletion, corresponds to qSW5/GW5. GW5 is expressed in various rice organs, with highest expression level detected in young panicles. We provide evidence that the 1,212-bp deletion affects grain width most likely through influencing the expression levels of GW5. GW5 protein is localized to the plasma membrane and can physically interact with and repress the kinase activity of rice GSK2 (glycogen synthase kinase 2), a homologue of Arabidopsis BIN2 (BRASSINOSTEROID INSENSITIVE2) kinase, resulting in accumulation of unphosphorylated OsBZR1 (Oryza sativa BRASSINAZOLE RESISTANT1) and DLT (DWARF AND LOW-TILLERING) proteins in the nucleus to mediate brassinosteroid (BR)-responsive gene expression and growth responses (including grain width and weight). Our results suggest that GW5 is a novel positive regulator of BR signalling and a viable target for genetic manipulation to improve grain yield in rice and perhaps in other cereal crops as well.
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Acknowledgements
We thank C. Chu (Chinese Academy of Sciences) for kindly providing the Go and Gi transgenic seeds; we thank X.W. Deng (Peking University), C. Wu (Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences) and J. Zhou (Frontier Laboratories of Systems Crop Design) for technical support. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 91535302 and No. 31430008), National Key Research and Development Plan (2016YFD0100400) and National Transformation Science and Technology Program (2014ZX08001006).
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J.L. and J.C. performed most of the experiments; X.Zheng performed the analysis of molecular evolution; F.W., Q.L, Y.H., P.T., Z.C. and X.Y. provided technical assistance; K.Z. performed some of the sub-cellular localization assay; X.Zhang and X.G. generated the transgenic plants; J.Wang cultivated the transgenic plants in the field; J.Wan and H.W. supervised the project; J.Wan, H.W. and J.L. designed the research and wrote the manuscript.
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Supplementary information
Supplementary Information
Supplementary Figures 1–22, Supplementary Tables 1 and 3, Legend for Supplementary Table 2. (PDF 5383 kb)
Supplementary Table 2
List of SNP's in 6.3-kb upstream region of GW5. (XLSX 132 kb)
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Liu, J., Chen, J., Zheng, X. et al. GW5 acts in the brassinosteroid signalling pathway to regulate grain width and weight in rice. Nature Plants 3, 17043 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nplants.2017.43
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nplants.2017.43
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