Rice genes labeled 'broken' turn out to control pollen fertility
Cho HJ, Lee SK, Jang MJ, Jung KH, Kim S
Crispr
The next time a tomato or squash plant sets fewer fruit than expected, the culprit could be a pollen-fertility gene that standard genetic screening tools were built to miss entirely.
Plants have thousands of genes that fold into a specific pinwheel-shaped protein called a WD40 domain, but computer tools that scan DNA often miss parts of these genes because their sequences look too different from the norm. Researchers rebuilt 3D models of these proteins across 117 plant genomes and found over 41,000 'invisible' gene segments that still fold correctly and work. Two of these hidden genes in rice turned out to be essential: one lets pollen tubes grow, and the other lets pollen germinate at all, meaning a rice plant missing either gene can't reproduce properly.
Key Findings
Reannotation of 117 plant genomes uncovered 41,379 WD40 domains in 17,369 genes that sequence-based tools had completely missed
CRISPR-Cas9 knockouts showed OsWD40-31 is required for pollen tube elongation and OsWD40-169 is required for pollen germination in rice
Disrupting these 'invisible' domains reduced binding to reproductive regulators PME1 and Lipase3, confirmed via yeast two-hybrid and co-immunoprecipitation assays
chevron_right Technical Summary
Scientists discovered that many plant genes long assumed to be 'incomplete' actually build fully functional protein structures that sequence-based gene readers simply couldn't detect, and two of these hidden genes turn out to be essential for rice pollen development.
Abstract Preview
Original paper
Integrative sequence-structure analysis reveals hidden WD40 domains forming stable β-propeller folds with potential biological functions in plants.
WD40 proteins form β-propeller structures that are essential for plant development and signaling; however, their complete domain architecture is often missed owing to high sequence divergence. Here...
open_in_new Read full abstractAbstract copyright held by the original publisher.
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