Biochemical and physiological flexibility accompanies reduced cellulose biosynthesis in Brachypodium cesa1

Here, we present a study into the mechanisms of primary cell wall cellulose formation in grasses, using the model cereal grass Brachypodium distachyon. The exon found adjacent to the BdCESA1 glycosyltransferase QXXRW motif was targeted using Targeting Induced Local Lesions in Genomes (TILLING) and sequencing candidate amplicons in multiple parallel reactions (SCAMPRing) leading to the identification of the Bdcesa1 allele. Plants carrying this missense mutation exhibited a significant reduction in crystalline cellulose content in tissues that rely on the primary cell wall for biomechanical support. However, Bdcesa1 plants failed to exhibit the predicted reduction in plant height. In a mechanism unavailable to eudicotyledons, B. distachyon plants homozygous for the Bdcesa1 allele appear to overcome the loss of internode expansion anatomically by increasing the number of nodes along the stem. Stem biomechanics were resultantly compromised in Bdcesa1 . The Bdcesa1 missense mutation did not interfere with BdCESA1 gene expression. However, molecular dynamic simulations of the CELLULOSE SYNTHASE A (CESA) structure with modelled membrane interactions illustrated that Bdcesa1 exhibited structural changes in the translated gene product responsible for reduced cellulose biosynthesis. Molecular dynamic simulations showed that substituting S830N resulted in a stabilizing shift in the flexibility of the class specific region arm of the core catalytic domain of CESA, revealing the importance of this motion to protein function.