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GW5 acts in the brassinosteroid signalling pathway to regulate grain width and weight in rice

Nature Plants volume 3, Article number: 17043 (2017) Cite this article

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Abstract

Grain size is a major determinant of grain yield in cereal crops. qSW5/GW5, which exerts the greatest effect on rice grain width and weight, was fine-mapped to a 2,263-bp/21-kb genomic region containing a 1,212-bp deletion, respectively. Here, we show that a gene encoding a calmodulin binding protein, located ∼5 kb downstream of the 1,212-bp deletion, corresponds to qSW5/GW5. GW5 is expressed in various rice organs, with highest expression level detected in young panicles. We provide evidence that the 1,212-bp deletion affects grain width most likely through influencing the expression levels of GW5. GW5 protein is localized to the plasma membrane and can physically interact with and repress the kinase activity of rice GSK2 (glycogen synthase kinase 2), a homologue of Arabidopsis BIN2 (BRASSINOSTEROID INSENSITIVE2) kinase, resulting in accumulation of unphosphorylated OsBZR1 (Oryza sativa BRASSINAZOLE RESISTANT1) and DLT (DWARF AND LOW-TILLERING) proteins in the nucleus to mediate brassinosteroid (BR)-responsive gene expression and growth responses (including grain width and weight). Our results suggest that GW5 is a novel positive regulator of BR signalling and a viable target for genetic manipulation to improve grain yield in rice and perhaps in other cereal crops as well.

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Figure 1: Identification of GW5 gene.
Figure 2: The 1,212-bp deletion affects grain width through influencing GW5 expression.
Figure 3: GW5 physically interacts with GSK2 and is involved in BR signalling in rice.
Figure 4: GW5 represses GSK2 kinase activity on OsBZR1 and DLT.

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Acknowledgements

We thank C. Chu (Chinese Academy of Sciences) for kindly providing the Go and Gi transgenic seeds; we thank X.W. Deng (Peking University), C. Wu (Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences) and J. Zhou (Frontier Laboratories of Systems Crop Design) for technical support. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 91535302 and No. 31430008), National Key Research and Development Plan (2016YFD0100400) and National Transformation Science and Technology Program (2014ZX08001006).

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Author notes

  1. Jiafan Liu and Jun Chen: These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Key Facility for Crop Gene Resources and Genetic Improvement, Institute of Crop Science, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, 100081, China

    Jiafan Liu, Jun Chen, Xiaoming Zheng, Fuqing Wu, Qibing Lin, Yueqin Heng, Peng Tian, ZhiJun Cheng, Xin Zhang, Xiuping Guo, Jiulin Wang, Haiyang Wang & Jianmin Wan

  2. National key Laboratory for Crop Genetics and Germplasm Enhancement, Jiangsu Plant Gene Engineering Research Center, Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing, 210095, China

    Xiaowen Yu, Kunneng Zhou & Jianmin Wan

Authors
  1. Jiafan Liu
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Contributions

J.L. and J.C. performed most of the experiments; X.Zheng performed the analysis of molecular evolution; F.W., Q.L, Y.H., P.T., Z.C. and X.Y. provided technical assistance; K.Z. performed some of the sub-cellular localization assay; X.Zhang and X.G. generated the transgenic plants; J.Wang cultivated the transgenic plants in the field; J.Wan and H.W. supervised the project; J.Wan, H.W. and J.L. designed the research and wrote the manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Haiyang Wang or Jianmin Wan.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figures 1–22, Supplementary Tables 1 and 3, Legend for Supplementary Table 2. (PDF 5383 kb)

Supplementary Table 2

List of SNP's in 6.3-kb upstream region of GW5. (XLSX 132 kb)

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Liu, J., Chen, J., Zheng, X. et al. GW5 acts in the brassinosteroid signalling pathway to regulate grain width and weight in rice. Nature Plants 3, 17043 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nplants.2017.43

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