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A Flexible Low Cost Hydroponic System for Assessing Plant Responses to Small Molecules in Sterile Conditions
Published on: August 25, 2018
Starch as a major integrator in the regulation of plant growth
Ronan Sulpice1, Eva-Theresa Pyl, Hirofumi Ishihara
1Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology, Am Muehlenberg 1, 14476 Potsdam-Golm, Germany.
Abstract:
Rising demand for food and bioenergy makes it imperative to breed for increased crop yield. Vegetative plant growth could be driven by resource acquisition or developmental programs. Metabolite profiling in 94 Arabidopsis accessions revealed that biomass correlates negatively with many metabolites, especially starch. Starch accumulates in the light and is degraded at night to provide a sustained supply of carbon for growth. Multivariate analysis revealed that starch is an integrator of the overall metabolic response. We hypothesized that this reflects variation in a regulatory network that balances growth with the carbon supply. Transcript profiling in 21 accessions revealed coordinated changes of transcripts of more than 70 carbon-regulated genes and identified 2 genes (myo-inositol-1-phosphate synthase, a Kelch-domain protein) whose transcripts correlate with biomass. The impact of allelic variation at these 2 loci was shown by association mapping, identifying them as candidate lead genes with the potential to increase biomass production.
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