Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2012 Sep;63(14):5323-35.
doi: 10.1093/jxb/ers190. Epub 2012 Aug 1.

The rice RAD51C gene is required for the meiosis of both female and male gametocytes and the DNA repair of somatic cells

Yanjun Kou  1 , Yuxiao Chang, Xianghua Li, Jinghua Xiao, Shiping Wang
Affiliations

The rice RAD51C gene is required for the meiosis of both female and male gametocytes and the DNA repair of somatic cells

Yanjun Kou et al. J Exp Bot. 2012 Sep.

Abstract

The RecA/RAD51 family of rice (Oryza sativa) consists of at least 13 members. However, the functions of most of these members are unknown. Here the functional characterization of one member of this family, RAD51C, is reported. Knockout (KO) of RAD51C resulted in both female and male sterility in rice. Transferring RAD51C to the RAD51C-KO line restored fertility. Cytological analyses showed that the sterility of RAD51C-KO plants was associated with abnormal early meiotic processes in both megasporocytes and pollen mother cells (PMCs). PMCs had an absence of normal pachytene chromosomes and had abnormal chromosome fragments. The RAD51C-KO line showed no obvious difference from wild-type plants in mitosis in the anther wall cells, which was consistent with the observation that the RAD51C-KO line did not have obviously abnormal morphology during vegetative development. However, the RAD51C-KO line was sensitive to different DNA-damaging agents. These results suggest that RAD51C is essential for reproductive development by regulating meiosis as well as for DNA damage repair in somatic cells.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Phylogenetic relationship of rice RecA/RAD51 family proteins and Arabidopsis (AtRAD51C; accession no. ACA14294) and human (HsRAD51C; AAC39604) RAD51C proteins. For rice RecA/RAD51 family genes encoding multiple proteins, only the sequence of the largest protein is compared with that of other proteins.
Fig. 2.
Fig. 2.
Phenotypes of RAD51C-KO plants. Dongjin is the wild type (WT). Bar=150μm. (A) Vegetative development stage. (B and C) Spikelets. (D and E) Anthers. (F and G) Photographs of eosin-B-stained anthers under confocal microscopy. (H) Panicles. (I and J) Iodium potassium iodide-stained pollen.
Fig. 3.
Fig. 3.
Development of the embryo sac in RAD51C-KO and wild-type (Dongjin) plants. Arrows indicate the megasporocyte or megaspore. AN, antipodals; PN, polar nucleus; SY, synerids. Bar=50μm.
Fig. 4.
Fig. 4.
Genotype and fertility of BC2F2 and BC3F2 populations segregated for T-DNA inserted in the RAD51C gene. 39630-m-F and 39630-m-R are RAD51C-specific PCR primers, and RB1 is a T-DNA-specific primer. Plants showing only the band amplified by 39630-m-F and RB1 were RAD51C-KO plants with a homozygous T-DNA insertion. Plants showing only the band amplified by 39630-m-F and 39630-m-R were negative plants without a T-DNA insertion. Plants showing both PCR amplification bands were heterozygous plants with heterozygous T-DNA insertion. The bar represents the mean (three panicles) ±SD. (A) Plant fertility of a BC2F2 population developed from the cross between the RAD51C-T-DNA insertion line (4D-50016) and wild-type (WT) Dongjin. (B) Plant fertility of a BC3F2 population developed from the cross between the RAD51C-T-DNA insertion line and rice variety Zhonghua 11 (ZH11).
Fig. 5.
Fig. 5.
The fertility of rice plants (RAD51C-KO-C) in two T1 families was associated with the existence of the RAD51C transgene in a RAD51C-KO background. The bar represents the mean (three panicles) ±SD. The vector-specific primer 2301-F and RAD51C promoter-specific primer rad51-com-R were used to examine the existence of the RAD51C transgene. The RAD51C-specific primer 39630-m-F and T-DNA-specific primer RB1 were used to examine the existence of a T-DNA insertion in RAD51C. The RAD51C-KO plant, which was the recipient of the RAD51C transgene, had the genetic background of Dongjin (wild type, WT).
Fig. 6.
Fig. 6.
Cytological analysis of meiotic processes of pollen mother cells in RAD51C-KO and wild-type plants. Bar=25μm.
Fig. 7.
Fig. 7.
Cytological analysis of mitotic processes of anther wall cells in RAD51C-KO and wild-type plants. Bar=5μm.
Fig. 8.
Fig. 8.
RAD51C-KO plants were hypersensitive to MMS, MMC, and UV-C irradiation. Each data point represents the mean (averaged from eight plants) ±SD. A significant difference between RAD51C-KO plants and wild-type (WT) siblings segregated from the RAD51C-KO line was detected at P < 0.0005 (*). (A) Performance of rice plants after treatment with different concentrations of MMS.(B) Performance of rice plants after treatment with different concentrations of MMC. (C) Rice flag leaves after treatment with UV irradiation.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Abdu U, Gonzalez-Reyes A, Ghabrial A, Schupbach T. 2003. The Drosophila spn-D gene encodes a RAD51C-like protein that is required exclusively during meiosis Genetics 165 197– 204 - PMC - PubMed
    1. Abe K, Osakabe K, Nakayama S, Endo M, Tagiri A, Todoriki S, Ichikawa H, Toki S. 2005. Arabidopsis RAD51C gene is important for homologous recombination in meiosis and mitosis Plant Physiology 139 896– 908 - PMC - PubMed
    1. Agmon N, Pur S, Liefshitz B, Kupiec M. 2009. Analysis of repair mechanism choice during homologous recombination Nucleic Acids Research 37 5081– 5092 - PMC - PubMed
    1. Alexander MP. 1969. Differential staining of aborted and nonaborted pollen Stain Technology 44 117– 122 - PubMed
    1. Altschul SF, Madden TL, Schaffer AA, Zhang J, Zhang Z, Miller W, Lipman DJ. 1997. Gapped BLAST and PSI-BLAST: a new generation of protein database search programs Nucleic Acids Research 25 3389– 3402 - PMC - PubMed

Publication types

MeSH terms