Grain number and seed-setting rate are components of crop yield. Cytokinin influences grain yield. However, emerging studies suggest that high cytokinin signals often lead to reduced branching or seed-setting rate, leading to reduced grain yield, although the mechanisms remain unclear. In this study, we identified and characterized the rice (Oryza sativa L.) gene LONELY GUY-LIKE 8 (LOGL8), based on analysis of the LOGL8-pm (promoter mutant of LOGL8) mutant, which harbors a T-DNA insertion in the promoter of this gene. The mutation in LOGL8-pm causes ectopic hyperexpression of LOGL8 in inflorescence organs, resulting in plants with smaller panicles and defective ovules lacking archesporial cells and integuments. Knockout of LOGL8 caused pollen abortion, leading to a reduced seed-setting rate. LOGL8 encodes a putative cytokinin-activating enzyme. Our results showed that LOGL8 directly catalyzes the biosynthesis of bioactive cytokinins. Therefore, we propose that the ectopic expression of LOGL8 disrupts cytokinin spatiotemporal distribution and causes inhibition of LONELY GUY (LOG), which affects panicle branching and female organ development. These findings reveal the important role of LOGL8 in male development, and highlight the delicate balance of local cytokinin levels during panicle branching and female organ development.

Dear Editor, CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats)/Cas genome editing is a powerful tool for introducing specific mutations in organisms including plants.The system is composed of a nuclease such as Cas9 or Casl2a and an engineered single-guide RNA (sgRNA) incorporating a target sequence (Li et al.,2019).A Cas9/sgRNA complex recognizes its target site in the genome,resulting in a mutation at that site.When multiple specific sgRNAs are introduced,the resulting complexes cause mutations in the corresponding target sites (Cong et al.,2013;Ma et al.,2015).In animals,one or more sgRNA transcripts or expression cassettes can be mixed and injected into host cells.However,genome editing in plants usually requires stable transformation of Cas9 gene and sgRNA expression cassettes.

Hybrid sterility (HS) between Oryza sativa (Asian rice) and O . glaberrima (African rice) is mainly controlled by the S1 locus. However, our limited understanding of the HS mechanism hampers utilization of the strong interspecific heterosis. Here, we show that three closely linked genes ( S1A4 , S1TPR , and S1A6 ) in the African S1 allele ( S1-g ) constitute a killer-protector system that eliminates gametes carrying the Asian allele ( S1-s ). In Asian–African rice hybrids ( S1-gS1-s ), the S1TPR-S1A4-S1A6 interaction in sporophytic tissues generates an abortion signal to male and female gametes. However, S1TPR can rescue S1-g gametes, while the S1-s gametes selectively abort for lacking S1TPR. Knockout of any of the S1-g genes eliminates the HS. Evolutionary analysis suggests that S1 may have arisen from newly evolved genes, multi-step recombination, and nucleotide variations. Our findings will help to overcome the interspecific reproductive barrier and use Asian–African hybrids for increasing rice production.

Carotenoids are important phytonutrients with antioxidant properties, and are widely used in foods and feedstuffs as supplements. Astaxanthin, a red-colored ketocarotenoid, has strong antioxidant activity and thus can benefit human health. However, astaxanthin is not produced in most higher plants. Here we report the bioengineering of astaxanthin biosynthesis in rice endosperm by introducing four synthetic genes, sZmPSY1, sPaCrtI, sCrBKT, and sHpBHY, which encode the enzymes phytoene synthase, phytoene desaturase, β-carotene ketolase, and β-carotene hydroxylase, respectively. Transgneic overexpression of two (sZmPSY1 and sPaCrtI), three (sZmPSY1, sPaCrtI and sCrBKT), and all these four genes driven by rice endosperm-specific promoters established the carotenoid/ketocarotenoid/astaxanthin biosynthetic pathways in the endosperm and thus resulted in various types of germplasm, from the yellow-grained β-carotene-enriched Golden Rice to orange-red-grained Canthaxanthin Rice and Astaxanthin Rice, respectively. Grains of Astaxanthin Rice were enriched with astaxanthin in the endosperm and had higher antioxidant activity. These results proved that introduction of a minimal set of four transgenes enables de novo biosynthesis of astaxanthin in the rice endosperm. This work provides a successful example for synthetic biology in plants and biofortification in crops; the biofortified rice products generated by this study could be consumed as health-promoting foods and processed to produce dietary supplements.

Hybrids between divergent populations commonly show hybrid sterility; this reproductive barrier hinders hybrid breeding of the japonica and indica rice ( Oryza sativa L.) subspecies. Here we show that structural changes and copy number variation at the Sc locus confer japonica–indica hybrid male sterility. The japonica allele, Sc-j , contains a pollen-essential gene encoding a DUF1618-domain protein; the indica allele, Sc-i , contains two or three tandem-duplicated ~ 28-kb segments, each carrying an Sc-j -homolog with a distinct promoter. In Sc-j / Sc-i hybrids, the high-expression of Sc-i in sporophytic cells causes suppression of Sc-j expression in pollen and selective abortion of Sc-j -pollen, leading to transmission ratio distortion. Knocking out one or two of the three Sc-i copies by CRISPR/Cas9 rescues Sc-j expression and male fertility. Our results reveal the gene dosage-dependent allelic suppression as a mechanism of hybrid incompatibility, and provide an effective approach to overcome the reproductive barrier for hybrid breeding.

Anthocyanins have high antioxidant activities, and engineering of anthocyanin biosynthesis in staple crops, such as rice (Oryza sativa L.), could provide health-promoting foods for improving human health. However, engineering metabolic pathways for biofortification remains difficult, and previous attempts to engineer anthocyanin production in rice endosperm failed because of the sophisticated genetic regulatory network of its biosynthetic pathway. In this study, we developed a high-efficiency vector system for transgene stacking and used it to engineer anthocyanin biosynthesis in rice endosperm. We made a construct containing eight anthocyanin-related genes (two regulatory genes from maize and six structural genes from Coleus) driven by the endosperm-specific promoters, plus a selectable marker and a gene for marker excision. Transformation of rice with this construct generated a novel biofortified germplasm "Purple Endosperm Rice'' (called "Zijingmi'' in Chinese), which has high anthocyanin contents and antioxidant activity in the endosperm. This anthocyanin production results from expression of the transgenes and the resulting activation (or enhancement) of expression of 13 endogenous anthocyanin biosynthesis genes that are silenced or expressed at low levels in wild-type rice endosperm. This study provides an efficient, versatile toolkit for transgene stacking and demonstrates its use for successful engineering of a sophisticated biological pathway, suggesting the potential utility of this toolkit for synthetic biology and improvement of agronomic traits in plants.

Investigation of protein-DNA interactions provides crucial information for understanding the mechanisms of gene regulation. Current methods for studying protein-DNA interactions, such as DNaseI footprinting or gel shift assays, involve labeling DNA with radioactive or fluorescent tags, making these methods costly, laborious, and potentially damaging to the environment. Here, we describe a novel cleaved amplified polymorphic sequence (CAPS)-based binding assay (CBA), which is a label-free method that can simplify the semi-quantitative validation of protein-DNA interactions. The CBA tests the interaction between a protein and its target DNA, based on the CAPS pattern produced due to differences in the accessibility of a restriction endonuclease site (intrinsic or artificial) in amplified DNA in the presence and absence of the protein of interest. Thus, the CBA can produce a semi-quantitative readout of the interaction strength based on the dose of the binding protein. We demonstrate the principle and feasibility of CBA using B3, MADS3 proteins and the corresponding RY or CArG-box containing DNAs.

New gene origination is a major source of genomic innovations that confer phenotypic changes and biological diversity. Generation of new mitochondrial genes in plants may cause cytoplasmic male sterility (CMS), which can promote outcrossing and increase fitness. However, how mitochondrial genes originate and evolve in structure and function remains unclear. The rice Wild Abortive type of CMS is conferred by the mitochondrial gene WA352c (previously named WA352) and has been widely exploited in hybrid rice breeding. Here, we reconstruct the evolutionary trajectory of WA352c by the identification and analyses of 11 mitochondrial genomic recombinant structures related to WA352c in wild and cultivated rice. We deduce that these structures arose through multiple rearrangements among conserved mitochondrial sequences in the mitochondrial genome of the wild rice Oryza rufipogon, coupled with sub-stoichiometric shifting and sequence variation. We identify two expressed but nonfunctional protogenes among these structures, and show that they could evolve into functional CMS genes via sequence variations that could relieve the self-inhibitory potential of the proteins. These sequence changes would endow the proteins the ability to interact with the nucleus-encoded mitochondrial protein COX11,resulting in premature programmed cell death in the anther tapetum and male sterility. Furthermore, we show that the sequences that encode the COX11-interaction domains in these WA352c-related genes have experienced purifying selection during evolution. We propose a model for the formation and evolution of new CMS genes via a "multi-recombination/protogene formation/functionalization" mechanism involving gradual variations in the structure, sequence, copy number, and function.

A rice mutant aberrant floral organ 1 (afo1) was identified, showing increased floral organ number, aberrant floral organ identity and loss of floral meristem determinacy. A disruption of sequence integrity at 6292-bp upstream of RFL by a T-DNA insertion led to varied RFL expression patterns in floral meristem and floret in afo1 and caused the mutant phenotype.

CRISPR/Cas9 genome targeting systems have been applied to a variety of species. However, most CRISPR/Cas9 systems reported for plants can only modify one or a few target sites. Here, we report a robust CRISPR/Cas9 vector system, utilizing a plant codon optimized Cas9 gene, for convenient and high-efficiency multiplex genome editing in monocot and dicot plants. We designed PCR-based procedures to rapidly generate multiple sgRNA expression cassettes, which can be assembled into the binary CRISPR/Cas9 vectors in one round of cloning by Golden Gate ligation or Gibson Assembly. With this system, we edited 46 target sites in rice with an average 85.4% rate of mutation, mostly in biallelic and homozygous status. We reasoned that about 16% of the homozygous mutations in rice were generated through the non-homologous end-joining mechanism followed by homologous recombination-based repair. We also obtained uniform biallelic, heterozygous, homozygous, and chimeric mutations in Arabidopsis T1 plants. The targeted mutations in both rice and Arabidopsis were heritable. We provide examples of loss-of-function gene mutations in T0 rice and T1 Arabidopsis plants by simultaneous targeting of multiple (up to eight) members of a gene family, multiple genes in a biosynthetic pathway, or multiple sites in a single gene. This system has provided a versatile toolbox for studying functions of multiple genes and gene families in plants for basic research and genetic improvement.

Yao-Guang Liu and colleagues identify the molecular basis of male sterility in the Wild Abortive CMS (CMS-WA) system that has been widely used for hybrid rice breeding. They report that a new mitochondrial gene, WA532 , confers male sterility because its protein product interacts with the mitochondrial protein COX11 and leads to cytoplasmic-nuclear incompatibility.

Plant height is an important agronomic trait for crop architecture and yield. Most known factors determining plant height function in gibberellin or brassinosteroid biosynthesis or signal transduction. Here, we report a japonica rice (Oryza sativa ssp. japonica) dominant dwarf mutant, Photoperiod-sensitive dwarf 1 (Psd1). The Psd1 mutant showed impaired cell division and elongation, and a severe dwarf phenotype under long-day conditions, but nearly normal growth in short-day. The plant height of Psd1 mutant could not be rescued by gibberellin or brassinosteroid treatment. Genetic analysis with R1 and F2 populations determined that Psd1 phenotype was controlled by a single dominant locus. Linkage analysis with 101 tall F2 plants grown in a long-day season, which were derived from a cross between Psd1 and an indica cultivar, located Psd1 locus on chromosome 1. Further fine-mapping with 1017 tall F2 plants determined this locus on an 11.5-kb region. Sequencing analysis of this region detected a mutation site in a gene encoding a putative lipid transfer protein; the mutation produces a truncated C-terminus of the protein. This study establishes the genetic foundation for understanding the molecular mechanisms regulating plant cell division and elongation mediated by interaction between genetic and environmental factors.