The rice DEAD-box RNA helicase OseIF4AIIa associates with the CCR4-NOT complex and exhibits stress-responsive expression.
Nguyen VB, Nguyen TH, Nguyen TM, Chu HM
Crop Improvement
PubMedUnderstanding how rice survives drought, cold snaps, and salty soils could help scientists breed more resilient varieties — protecting a food source that feeds over half the world's population.
Rice plants have a special helper protein that acts like a coordinator inside the cell, managing which genetic messages get read and which get ignored — especially when the plant is under stress from too much salt, cold temperatures, or drought. Researchers found this protein is active in many parts of the rice plant and gets switched on strongly when conditions get tough. When they used gene-editing tools to disable this protein, young seedlings grew more slowly, showing it plays an important role in early plant development.
Key Findings
OseIF4AIIa expression was strongly induced by salinity and cold stress, moderately altered by drought, and suppressed by heat in rice.
CRISPR/Cas9-edited rice plants lacking OseIF4AIIa showed reduced early seedling growth, confirming its role in vegetative development.
OseIF4AIIa physically interacts with multiple components of the CCR4-NOT mRNA regulation complex, including CAF1 proteins and the MIF4G domain of OsNOT1, mirroring its close relative OseIF4AIIb.
chevron_right Technical Summary
Scientists identified a stress-responsive protein in rice called OseIF4AIIa that helps control how genes are turned on and off during harsh conditions like drought, cold, and salt stress. This protein connects to a key cellular machinery complex and appears to play a role in early seedling growth.
Abstract Preview
The CCR4-NOT complex is a major regulator of mRNA metabolism in eukaryotes, yet the contribution of plant DEAD-box RNA helicases to this complex remains insufficiently defined. Rice contains two cl...
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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...