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Functional Plant Biology Functional Plant Biology Society
Plant function and evolutionary biology
RESEARCH ARTICLE

The kinase and FATC domains of VvTOR affect sugar-related gene expression and sugar accumulation in grape (Vitis vinifera)

Ying Zhao https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3556-3300 A and Xiu-Qin Wang https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4764-835X A *
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- Author Affiliations

A College of Food Science and Nutritional Engineering, China Agricultural University, Beijing 100083, P.R. China.

* Correspondence to: wangxqbj@163.com

Handling Editor: David Cahill

Functional Plant Biology 49(11) 927-935 https://doi.org/10.1071/FP21302
Submitted: 11 October 2021  Accepted: 23 June 2022   Published: 12 July 2022

© 2022 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing

Abstract

The TOR (target of rapamycin) signalling network plays a pivotal role in sugar metabolism and plant growth. In this study, we used grape (Vitis vinifera L.) calli to explore the function of the kinase and FATC domains (C-terminal of FAT (FRAP-ATM-TTRAP) of VvTOR (Vitis vinifera target of rapamycin). We found that the activity of VvTOR affected sugar-related gene expression. VvTOR-VvS6K pathway potentially participated in regulating sugar gene expression. We obtained the over-expression of kinase and FATC domains in transgenic calli by Agrobacterium-mediated transformation. Even though the kinase and FATC domains all belong to VvTOR protein, their functions were different in the regulating sugar accumulation and sugar-related gene expression. We speculated that the kinase domain positively regulated sugar accumulation and FATC domain may negatively influenced sugar accumulation. FATC and kinase domains of VvTOR co-regulated sugar accumulation in grape. These observations will provide framework for future investigations to address other functions of TOR signalling in plant development and signalling pathways.

Keywords: FATC domain, grape, kinase domain, sugar accumulation, sugar-related gene expression, target of rapamycin, transgenic grape calli, VvTOR.


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