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.
Nat Biotechnol. 2013 Sep;31(9):848-52. doi: 10.1038/nbt.2646. Epub 2013 Jul 21.
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.
提高粮食产量是全球作物培育者的主要关注点。在这里，我们报告说，过量表达水稻 microRNA（miRNA）OsmiR397，该 miRNA 在幼穗和籽粒中天然高度表达，可增大籽粒大小并促进穗分枝，从而在田间试验中使总谷物产量增加高达 25%。据我们所知，以前没有报道表明 miRNA 在控制植物种子大小和谷物产量方面具有正向调节作用。我们确定 OsmiR397 通过下调其靶标 OsLAC 来增加谷物产量，OsLAC 的产物是一种漆酶样蛋白，我们发现它参与了植物对油菜素内酯的敏感性。由于 miR397在不同物种中高度保守，我们的结果表明，操纵 miR397 不仅可以提高水稻，而且可以提高其他谷类作物的谷物产量。
