Jinde Yu

The chloroplast (cp.) is the photosynthetic organelle of plants and algae, responsible for acquiring essential energy. It possesses relatively independent

Phosphoethanolamine N-methyltransferase (PEAMT) is a key enzyme that catalyzes three successive methylation steps of phosphoethanolamine (P-EA) to phosphocholine (P-Cho). Meanwhile, P-Cho is a major precursor of phosphatidylcholine (PC) and glycine betaine (GB), which are involved in cell signal transduction, stress response, etc. Therefore, the PEAMT gene plays an essential role in plant growth and development as well as stress resistance. There are two homologous PEAMT genes in rice (Oryza sativa L. ssp. japonica), namely, OsPEAMT1 and OsPEAMT2. However, there has not been any comprehensive functional analysis of these two genes. Here, we employed bioinformatics methods to analyze the amino acid sequences and promoters of OsPEAMT1 and OsPEAMT2, and found that both proteins contain two methyltransferase domains. OsPEAMT1 is highly similar with ZmPEAMT, and OsPEAMT2 is closely related to LmPEAMT and TaPEAMT. There are abundant plant hormone response elements, stress response elements and low-temperature response elements in the promoters of OsPEAMT1 and OsPEAMT2. The in vitro enzymatic activity assays of recombinant proteins of OsPEAMT1 and OsPEAMT2 indicated that they can catalyze the production of P-Cho from P-EA, respectively. Meanwhile, the endogenous P-Cho content increased significantly (p < 0.05) when exogenous P-EA was added to rice. These indicate that OsPEAMT1 and OsPEAMT2 proteins have catalytic functions in vivo and in vitro. The expression patterns of both genes are different in different tissues, flowers and seeds at various developmental stages. Additionally, both genes have different responses to salt and low-temperature stress. This study supplies valuable insights into the function of OsPEAMT1 and OsPEAMT2, and it will provide key targets for rice molecular breeding, offering important insights for the development of rice with stress resistance and high yield.

Glycine betaine (GB) is an important osmoprotectant that enables plants to resist abiotic stresses such as salinity, low-temperature and drought. GB can be synthesized in many organisms, including animals, plants and bacteria. In higher plants, GB is synthesized through two-step oxidations of choline.However, rice, an important food crop, cannot synthesize GB. Recently, an enzyme , encoded by TpGSDMT gene finding in a diatom Talassiosira pseudonana, which can catalyze the three successive methylation steps of glycine to form GB. And this biosynthetic pathway for GB synthesis is also the simplest in living organisms. Here, TpGSDMT gene was isolated from Talassiosira pseudonana and cloned into overexpression vector pBWA(V)HS that contains CaMV 35S promoter, and then the constructed vector was introduced into rice(Oryza sativa L. ssp. Japonica).The GB content in transgenic rice that overexpression TpGSDMT was significantly increased , and the tolerance to salt and low-temperature was markedly enhanced in thses transformants.These results indicate the TpGSDMT gene can be used for genetic improvement of crop plants resistance to abiotic stress.

Toxicodendron succedaneum (L.) Kuntze (T. succedaneum) is an economic tree species that produces urushiol and urushi wax, and it is of great value in industry and medicine. However, the stability of reference genes (RGs) has not been systematically reported in T. succedaneum to date. In this study, the expression of 10 candidate RGs was analyzed by RT-qPCR in different tissues (roots, stems, leaves), stress treatments (high/low temperature, drought), and hormone stimulation (jasmonic acid, JA). Then, the stability ranking of 10 candidate genes was evaluated by ∆Ct analysis and three software programs: geNorm, NormFinder, and BestKeeper. Finally, RefFinder was used to comprehensively analyze the expression stability of 10 candidate genes. The comprehensive analysis showed that TsRG05/06, TsRG01/06, and TsRG03/ACT were stable under high/low-temperature stress, drought stress, and JA treatment, respectively. TsRG03 and ACT had stable expression in different tissues. While the TsRG03 and ACT were recommended as the suitable RGs for T. succedaneum in all samples. Meanwhile, UBQ was the least suitable as a reference gene for T. succedaneum. In addition, the results of geNorm showed that the combination of two stable RGs could make the results of gene expression more accurate. These results provide alternative RGs for the study of gene function, correction, and normalization of target gene expression and directed molecular breeding in T. succedaneum.