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Overexpression of microRNA OsmiR397 improves rice yield by increasing grain size and promoting panicle branching

Nature Biotechnology volume 31, pages 848–852 (2013)Cite this article

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Abstract

Increasing grain yields is a major focus of crop breeders around the world. Here we report that overexpression of the rice microRNA (miRNA) OsmiR397, which is naturally highly expressed in young panicles and grains, enlarges grain size and promotes panicle branching, leading to an increase in overall grain yield of up to 25% in a field trial. To our knowledge, no previous report has shown a positive regulatory role of miRNA in the control of plant seed size and grain yield. We determined that OsmiR397 increases grain yield by downregulating its target, OsLAC, whose product is a laccase-like protein that we found to be involved in the sensitivity of plants to brassinosteroids. As miR397 is highly conserved across different species, our results suggest that manipulating miR397 may be useful for increasing grain yield not only in rice but also in other cereal crops.

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Figure 1: Phenotypes of OXmiR397 and OXLAC transgenic rice plants.
Figure 2: Confirmation of OsmiR397-mediated downregulation of OsLAC and the expression patterns of OsmiR397 and OsLAC.
Figure 3: Mechanism analysis of OsmiR397-mediated OsLAC silence in increasing grain yield.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Q. Qian for helping with the field trial and C.C. Chu for the comments on brassinosteroid analysis. This research was supported by a key project of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. U0631001 and 90917011), funds from Ph.D. Programs Foundation of Ministry of Education of China (20120171130003), and from the Natural Science and Technology Department of Guangdong Province (2009A020102001 and S2011020001232).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Gene Engineering of the Ministry of Education, State Key Laboratory for Biocontrol, School of Life Science, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, PR China

    Yu-Chan Zhang, Yang Yu, Cong-Ying Wang, Ze-Yuan Li, Qing Liu, Jian-You Liao, Liang-Hu Qu & Yue-Qin Chen

  2. Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Biotechnology for Plant Development, College of Life Sciences, South China Normal University, Guangzhou, PR China

    Jie Xu, Xiao-Jing Wang & Hong-Qing Li

  3. National Center for Plant Gene Research, Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, PR China

    Fan Chen, Peiyong Xin, Cunyu Yan & Jinfang Chu

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  1. Yu-Chan Zhang
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Contributions

Y.-C.Z. conceived the experiment, and together with Y.Y., C.-Y.W., Z.-Y.L. and Q.L. carried it out; J.X. and J.-Y.L. carried out the transgenic plant generation and analysis; X.-J.W. and L.-H.Q. analyzed the data; F.C. carried out the field trial; P.X., C.Y. and J.C. performed brassinosteroid detection; Y.-C.Z., H.-Q.L. and Y.-Q.C. conceived the experiment and wrote the paper.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Hong-Qing Li or Yue-Qin Chen.

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Zhang, YC., Yu, Y., Wang, CY. et al. Overexpression of microRNA OsmiR397 improves rice yield by increasing grain size and promoting panicle branching. Nat Biotechnol 31, 848–852 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt.2646

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