Abstract
Autophagy, a conserved pathway in eukaryotes, degrades and recycles cellular components, thus playing an important role in nitrogen (N) remobilization. N plays an important role in the growth and development of plants, which also affects plant yield and quality. In this research, it was found that the transcriptional level of a core autophagy gene of rice (Oryza sativa), OsATG8c, was increased during N starvation conditions. It was found that the overexpression of OsATG8c significantly enhanced the activity of autophagy and that the number of autophagosomes, dwarfed the plant height and increased the effective tillers’ number and yield. The nitrogen uptake efficiency (NUpE) and nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) significantly increased in the transgenic rice under both optimal and suboptimal N conditions. Based on our results, OsATG8c is considered to be a good candidate gene for increasing NUE, especially under suboptimal field conditions.
Highlights
Autophagy is a conserved vacuolar degradation pathway by which cells recycle components, including unwanted macromolecular substances or damaged organelles
It was proved that β-glucuronidase (GUS) activity was detected in various rice organs, such as the roots of seedlings, culm, leaf sheaths, leaf blades, and young panicles at the booting stage, except that OsATG8c was expressed in the panicles at the grain filling stage (Figure 1A)
Previous studies have shown that many ATG genes are transcriptionally up-regulated under nutrient-deficient conditions, and enhanced autophagy occurs [46,47,62,63,64]
Summary
Autophagy is a conserved vacuolar degradation pathway by which cells recycle components, including unwanted macromolecular substances or damaged organelles. The nutrients are mobilized and reused for the maintenance of cellular processes and adaptation to stress [1]. The first AuTophaGy-related gene (ATG gene) was identified in yeast [2]. Many ATG genes have been characterized in different species, including mammals and plants [3,4,5]. In Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana), most ATG genes are transcriptionally up-regulated during leaf senescence and nutrient starvation [6,7,8]. Yeasts and plants, the identified proteins are responsible for the core autophagic mechanism [9]
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