Overexpression of a Rice TIFY Gene Increases Grain Size through Enhanced Accumulation of Carbohydrates in the Stem

Authors:
Publisher website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Screening of rice full-length cDNA overexpressing (FOX) lines allowed the identification of a TIFY gene, TIFY11b, as a growth-promoting gene whose overexpression increased plant height and seed size. The grains of TIFY11b-overexpressing plants exceeded those of non-transformants in length, width and thickness, resulting in 9–21% increases in grain weight. The increase was achieved by overexpressing the gene in the whole plant body, but not by seed-restricted expression, indicating that seed enlargement is attributable to overexpression in vegetative organs such as the leaf. The whole-body overexpressing plants developed longer leaves along with higher levels of starch and sucrose in the leaf sheath and culm at the heading stage than the non-transformants. Although overexpression of TIFY11b did not alter the photosynthetic rate per leaf area before and after heading, it caused an accumulation of higher levels of the carbohydrate assimilate, probably due to increased photosynthesis per plant, suggesting tha...

This publication has 38 references indexed in Scilit: