Expression of sucrose synthase in the developing endosperm is essential for early seed development in cotton
Yong-Ling Ruan A D , Danny J. Llewellyn B , Qing Liu B , Shou-Min Xu B , Li-Min Wu B , Lu Wang C and Robert T. Furbank BA School of Environmental and Life Sciences, The University of Newcastle, Callaghan, NSW 2308, Australia.
B CSIRO Plant Industry, GPO Box 1600, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia.
C Institute of Plant Physiology and Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200032, China.
D Corresponding author. Email: yong-ling.ruan@newcastle.edu.au
Functional Plant Biology 35(5) 382-393 https://doi.org/10.1071/FP08017
Submitted: 25 January 2008 Accepted: 1 May 2008 Published: 11 July 2008
Abstract
Successful seed development requires coordinated interaction of the endosperm and embryo. In most dicotyledonous seeds, the endosperm is crushed and absorbed by the expanding embryo in the later stages of seed development. Little is known about the metabolic interaction between the two filial tissues early in seed development. We examined the potential role of sucrose synthase (Sus) in the endosperm development of cotton. Sus was immunologically localised in the cellularising endosperm, but not in the heart-stage embryo at 10 days after anthesis. The activities of Sus and acid invertase were significantly higher in the endosperm than in the young embryos, which corresponded to a steep concentration difference in hexoses between the endosperm and the embryo. This observation indicates a role for the endosperm in generating hexoses for the development of the two filial tissues. Interestingly, Sus expression and starch deposition were spatially separated in the seeds. Silencing the expression of Sus in the endosperm using an RNAi approach led to the arrest of early seed development. Histochemical analyses revealed a significant reduction in cellulose and callose in the deformed endosperm cells of the Sus-suppressed seed. The data indicate a critical role of Sus in early seed development through regulation of endosperm formation.
Additional keywords: embryo, gene silencing, Sus.
Acknowledgements
We thank Dr Mark Talbot for excellent technical assistance in the fluorescent labelling of cellulose. We are grateful to Joanne Page for conducting cotton transformation.
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