O-linked N-acetylglucosamine transferase is involved in fine regulation of flowering time in winter wheat

Min Fan,Liuling Yan,Fang Miao,Genqiao Li,Carol Powers,Haiyan Jia,Brett F Carver,Phillip D Alderman,Ragupathi Nagarajan,Zhengqiang Ma

doi:10.1038/s41467-021-22564-8

Abstract

Vernalization genes underlying dramatic differences in flowering time between spring wheat and winter wheat have been studied extensively, but little is known about genes that regulate subtler differences in flowering time among winter wheat cultivars, which account for approximately 75% of wheat grown worldwide. Here, we identify a gene encoding an O-linked N-acetylglucosamine (O-GlcNAc) transferase (OGT) that differentiates heading date between winter wheat cultivars Duster and Billings. We clone this TaOGT1 gene from a quantitative trait locus (QTL) for heading date in a mapping population derived from these two bread wheat cultivars and analyzed in various environments. Transgenic complementation analysis shows that constitutive overexpression of TaOGT1b from Billings accelerates the heading of transgenic Duster plants. TaOGT1 is able to transfer an O-GlcNAc group to wheat protein TaGRP2. Our findings establish important roles for TaOGT1 in winter wheat in adaptation to global warming in the future climate scenarios.

Highlights

Vernalization genes underlying dramatic differences in flowering time between spring wheat and winter wheat have been studied extensively, but little is known about genes that regulate subtler differences in flowering time among winter wheat cultivars, which account for approximately 75% of wheat grown worldwide
We found that proteins extracted from TaOGT1b transgenic plants produced a higher OGlcNAcylation signal of TaGRP2 than those from non-transgenic plants (Fig. 5a, Supplementary Fig. 19a), indicating that TaOGT1 could O-GlcNAcylate TaGRP2
TaOGT1b promoted the heading of winter wheat cultivars under broad ambient temperatures because its intron contains a binding site for MADS-box transcriptional factors, including VRN1 and TaVRT2, which were tested in this study

Summary

Introduction

Vernalization genes underlying dramatic differences in flowering time between spring wheat and winter wheat have been studied extensively, but little is known about genes that regulate subtler differences in flowering time among winter wheat cultivars, which account for approximately 75% of wheat grown worldwide. We identify a gene encoding an Olinked N-acetylglucosamine (O-GlcNAc) transferase (OGT) that differentiates heading date between winter wheat cultivars Duster and Billings. We clone this TaOGT1 gene from a quantitative trait locus (QTL) for heading date in a mapping population derived from these two bread wheat cultivars and analyzed in various environments. The positional cloning of a major quantitative trait locus (QTL) that regulates the duration of the low-temperature requirement between semi-winter and strong winter wheat cultivars revealed that the trait is controlled by recessive vrn[1] alleles encoding two different vrn[1] proteins[13]. Molecular markers developed for these wheat PPD genes have accelerated their extensive use in breeding[15,16,17,18]

Methods

Results

Conclusion