Abstract
Male fertility in flowering plants depends on proper cellular differentiation in anthers. Meiosis and tapetum development are particularly important processes in pollen production. In this study, we showed that the tomato male sterile (ms10(35)) mutant of cultivated tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) exhibited dysfunctional meiosis and an abnormal tapetum during anther development, resulting in no pollen production. We demonstrated that Ms10(35) encodes a basic helix-loop-helix transcription factor that is specifically expressed in meiocyte and tapetal tissue from pre-meiotic to tetrad stages. Transgenic expression of the Ms10(35) gene from its native promoter complemented the male sterility of the ms10(35) mutant. In addition, RNA-sequencing-based transcriptome analysis revealed that Ms10(35) regulates 246 genes involved in anther development processes such as meiosis, tapetum development, cell-wall degradation, pollen wall formation, transport, and lipid metabolism. Our results indicate that Ms10(35) plays key roles in regulating both meiosis and programmed cell death of the tapetum during microsporogenesis.
Highlights
Pollen development is one of the most fundamental processes in the plant life cycle (Wilson and Zhang, 2009)
Ms1035 is important for controlling meiosis and tapetum development
Transcript analysis showed that expression of the meiosisspecific gene ROCK-N-ROLLER/AtMER3 (RCK/AtMER3), which is implicated in sister chromatid cohesion, was significantly reduced in dyt1 (Chen et al, 2005; Zhang et al, 2006), suggesting that DYSFUNCTIONAL TAPETUM1 (DYT1) regulates the expression of prophase I-related genes
Summary
Pollen development is one of the most fundamental processes in the plant life cycle (Wilson and Zhang, 2009). Plants deliver genetic material and expand genetic diversity by producing recombinant progeny in the subsequent generation (Deveshwar et al, 2011). Pollen development involves an exquisite pathway supported by cellular changes and the regulation of an enormous number of genes (Honys and Twell, 2004; Wilson and Zhang, 2009; Feng et al, 2012). In Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) and rice (Oryza sativa), anther development has been well studied and many of the genes involved have been identified. Archesporial cells in each lobe generate five distinct cell layers
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