Removing a molecular brake made rice plants yield more
Jiang L, Zhao L, Wei J, Jiang B, Xiao Y
Crop Improvement
The rice on dinner tables worldwide could get a genetic tune-up from this discovery, since engineering the same protein tweak in rice plants meaningfully boosted their grain yield in tests.
Cells have a protein called ALKBH5 that normally works on RNA, but it has a flexible tail that keeps it from wandering onto DNA and stirring up trouble. When scientists snipped off that tail in mice, plants, and rice, the protein started loosening up tightly packed DNA and switching genes on. In rice, this trick made the plants produce more grain, and in a mustard-family lab plant it made roots grow better, showing this tiny protein tweak could become a real tool for breeding hardier, higher-yielding crops.
Key Findings
The C-terminal intrinsically disordered region (IDR) of ALKBH5 normally restricts its activity to mRNA and limits its access to chromatin in mouse embryonic stem cells.
Deleting the IDR redirects ALKBH5 to chromatin-associated noncoding RNAs, causing widespread chromatin opening, transcriptional activation, and reactivation of transposable elements; the same restraint mechanism applies to histone demethylases.
Applying IDR deletion to ALKBH5 and its plant homologs enhanced root growth in Arabidopsis and markedly increased grain yield in rice.
chevron_right Technical Summary
Scientists found a molecular 'brake' that keeps a gene-editing enzyme from making unwanted changes to DNA, and removing that brake in plants boosted root growth in a lab plant and significantly increased rice yield.
Abstract Preview
Original paper
Intrinsically disordered regions restrain genomic targeting of RNA and histone demethylases in mammals and plants.
Intrinsically disordered regions (IDRs) are widely recognized as facilitators of chromatin regulation. However, their potential role as regulatory restraints remains poorly understood. Here we reve...
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...