On August 16 2016, Journal of Experimental Botany online published a research paper entitled “Temperature-sensitive albino gene TCD5, encoding a monooxygenase, affects chloroplast development at low temperatures” from Prof. Sheng Teng’s group at Shanghai Institute of Plant Physiology and Ecology (SIPPE). This study identified TCD5 as the key regulator that affects the chloroplast development at low temperature in rice.

The photosynthesis of plants is the ultimate source of food in the biological world. Leaf chloroplast is the main site of photosynthesis in higher plants. Since the green color of leaves is attributable largely to these chloroplasts that contain chlorophyll for photosynthesis, the leaf color mutants provide us an opportunity not only to elucidate the molecular mechanism of plant photosynthesis and chloroplast development, but also to improve the photosynthetic capacity of crops and increase crop yield using genetic engineering technology.

By screening the rice mutant library, Teng and his colleagues identified a number of temperature sensitive leaf color mutants. One of these, named as tcd5, develops albino leaves at low temperatures (20℃) but nearly normal green leaves at higher temperatures (32℃), suggesting TCS5 as a temporal responsive factor that governs chloroplast development under low temperature.

Closer examinations reveal that the development of chloroplasts and etioplasts is impaired whereas the development of thylakoid membranes is arrested in tcd5 plants at 20℃. TCD5 encodes a conserved plastid-targeted monooxygenase family protein which has not been previously reported associated with a temperature-sensitive albino phenotype in plants. Compared to wild type, the transcription of some genes involved in plastid transcription/translation and photosynthesis is affected in the tcd5 mutant. Interestingly, rice TCD5 is able to rescue the phenotype of the corresponding Arabidopsis mutant, suggesting that TCD5 function is conserved between monocots and dicots.

This research was conducted by Yufeng Wang, Jianhui Zhang and Xiaoliang Shi and supported by the grants (31570279, 31570269 and 31370284) from the National Science Foundation of China.

 

CONTACT:
Dr. Sheng Teng, PhD, Professor
Institute of Plant Physiology & Ecology (SIPPE)
Chinese Academy of Sciences
300 Fenglin Road
Shanghai 200032, China
Email:steng@sibs.ac.cn