Breaking one rice gene made plants far more drought hardy
Seo HU, Jang CS
Crispr
If you've ever watched a garden crop wilt during a dry spell, this points to the exact molecular switch that could someday be bred into food crops to keep them alive on less water.
Researchers found a natural rice mutant that survives drought much better than normal rice, and traced the cause to a broken gene called OsRRK1. Normally this gene's protein blocks another protein from doing its job of helping the plant build up sugars; when that block is removed, the rice accumulates more sugar and handles dry conditions far better. The team confirmed this by editing the gene out entirely, which made plants more drought tolerant, while adding extra copies of the gene made plants wilt faster.
Key Findings
A frameshift mutation in OsRRK1 (from a single guanine deletion at glycine position 100) produced a drought-tolerant rice line called ditl5
OsRRK1 normally phosphorylates OsFBA6, an enzyme in the glycolysis pathway; disrupting this phosphorylation boosts glycolytic gene expression and soluble sugar accumulation
CRISPR/Cas9 knockout of OsRRK1 enhanced drought tolerance, while overexpression lines showed greater drought susceptibility, confirming the gene acts as a negative regulator
chevron_right Technical Summary
Scientists disabled a single gene in rice and made the plants noticeably tougher during drought, because that gene normally holds back a protein that helps rice cells store more sugar and cope with water stress.
Abstract Preview
Original paper
Mutation in rice protein kinase OsRRK1 confers drought tolerance via non-phosphorylating fructose-1,6-bisphosphate aldolase 6.
Drought can severely restrict the productivity of rice, and thus gaining an understanding of its molecular basis is essential for developing viable stress-tolerant cultivars. In this study, to iden...
open_in_new Read full abstractAbstract copyright held by the original publisher.
Species Mentioned
Was this useful?
Want to tell us more? (optional)
Thanks for the note!
Something went wrong — please try again.
Too many submissions. Try again in an hour.
Gene editing removes 97% of celiac-triggering proteins from bread wheat
It could mean that people with celiac disease — roughly 1 in 100 worldwide — may one day safely eat bread made from real wheat, without sacrificing the taste...
Rice is a cereal grain and in its domesticated form is the staple food of over half of the world's population, particularly in Asia and Africa. Rice is the seed of the grass species Oryza sativa —or, much less commonly, Oryza glaberrima. Asian rice was domesticated in China some 13,500 to 8,200 y...