Abstract
Carotenoids play an important role in many physiological processes in plants and the phytoene desaturase gene (PDS3) encodes one of the important enzymes in the carotenoid biosynthesis pathway. Here we report the identification and analysis of a T-DNA insertion mutant of PDS3 gene. Functional complementation confirmed that both the albino and dwarf phenotypes of the pds3 mutant resulted from functional disruption of the PDS3 gene. Chloroplast development was arrested at the proplastid stage in the pds3 mutant. Further analysis showed that high level of phytoene was accumulated in the pds3 mutant. Addition of exogenous GA3 could partially rescue the dwarf phenotype, suggesting that the dwarf phenotype of the pds3 mutant might be due to GA deficiency. Microarray and RT-PCR analysis showed that disrupting PDS3 gene resulted in gene expression changes involved in at least 20 metabolic pathways, including the inhibition of many genes in carotenoid, chlorophyll, and GA biosynthesis pathways. Our data suggest that the accumulated phytoene in the pds3 mutant might play an important role in certain negative feedbacks to affect gene expression of diverse cellular pathways.
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Accession codes
Abbreviations
- GA:
-
(Gibberellic acid)
- ABA:
-
(Abscisic acid)
- PDS:
-
(phytoene desaturase)
- CLA1:
-
(1-deoxyxylulose 5-phosphate synthase)
- DXR:
-
(1-deoxyxylulose 5-phosphate reductoisomerase)
- HMGR:
-
(3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl coenzyme A reductase)
- IPI:
-
(isopentenyl pyrophosphate: dimethyllallyl pyrophosphate isomerase)
- GGPS:
-
(geranylgeranyl pyrophosphate synthase)
- CHS:
-
(chalcone synthase)
- GGRS:
-
(geranylgeranyl reductase)
- CPS:
-
(copalyl diphosphate synthase)
- KS:
-
(ent-Kaurene synthase)
- PSY:
-
(phytoene synthase)
- ZDS:
-
(z-carotene desaturase)
- LYC:
-
(lycopene cyclase)
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Acknowledgements
This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 30470172). The authors would like to thank Profs M Liu, N-S Pan, S-N Bai and S-Y Hu (College of Life Sciences, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China) for their technical assistance and valuable discussions, Mr B-L Zhang (Jiangsu Provincial Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Nanjing 210014, China) for help in the examination of phytohormones, and Dr K-Q Fan and Prof L-H Lai (College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China) for help in the examination of carotenoids in Arabidopsis. Special thanks go to other members of the authors' group in Peking University, Miss X-H Deng, J Ma and J Wang for growing Arabidopsis plants and Mrs P-C Liu and C Chen for helping analyze the microarray data.
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Qin, G., Gu, H., Ma, L. et al. Disruption of phytoene desaturase gene results in albino and dwarf phenotypes in Arabidopsis by impairing chlorophyll, carotenoid, and gibberellin biosynthesis. Cell Res 17, 471–482 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/cr.2007.40
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/cr.2007.40
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