- Title
- Roles of aquaporins in setaria viridis stem development and sugar storage
- Creator
- McGaughey, Samantha A.; Osborn, Hannah L.; Chen, Lily; Pegler, Joseph L.; Tyerman, Stephen D.; Furbank, Robert T.; Byrt, Caitlin S.; Grof, Christopher P. L.
- Relation
- ARC.http://CE140100008 http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/CE140100008
- Relation
- Frontiers in Plant Science Vol. 7, Issue December 2016, no. 1815
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2016.01815
- Publisher
- Frontiers Research Foundation
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2016
- Description
- Setaria viridis is a C₄ grass used as a model for bioenergy feedstocks. The elongating internodes in developing S. viridis stems grow from an intercalary meristem at the base, and progress acropetally toward fully expanded cells that store sugar. During stem development and maturation, water flow is a driver of cell expansion and sugar delivery. As aquaporin proteins are implicated in regulating water flow, we analyzed elongating and mature internode transcriptomes to identify putative aquaporin encoding genes that had particularly high transcript levels during the distinct stages of internode cell expansion and maturation. We observed that SvPIP2;1 was highly expressed in internode regions undergoing cell expansion, and SvNIP2;2 was highly expressed in mature sugar accumulating regions. Gene co-expression analysis revealed SvNIP2;2 expression was highly correlated with the expression of five putative sugar transporters expressed in the S. viridis internode. To explore the function of the proteins encoded by SvPIP2;1 and SvNIP2;2, we expressed them in Xenopus laevis oocytes and tested their permeability to water. SvPIP2;1 and SvNIP2;2 functioned as water channels in X. laevis oocytes and their permeability was gated by pH. Our results indicate that SvPIP2;1 may function as a water channel in developing stems undergoing cell expansion and SvNIP2;2 is a candidate for retrieving water and possibly a yet to be determined solute from mature internodes. Future research will investigate whether changing the function of these proteins influences stem growth and sugar yield in S. viridis.
- Subject
- aquaporin; stem; water transport; sugar accumulation; grasses
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1344107
- Identifier
- uon:29329
- Identifier
- ISSN:1664-462X
- Rights
- © 2016 McGaughey, Osborn, Chen, Pegler, Tyerman, Furbank, Byrt and Grof. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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