Poster: Reproductive Development

Abs # 477: Isolation and chracterization of a novel male-sterile mutant, flp1, lacking most of the reticulate pattern of pollen exine.

Presenter:	Ariizumi, Toru , zumi@bios.tohoku.ac.jp
Authors	Ariizumi, Toru  (A)   Hatakeyama, Katsunori  (B)   Hinata, Kokichi  (C) (D)  Sato, Shusei  (E)   Kato, Tomohiko  (E)   Tabata, Satashi  (E)   Toriyama, Kinya  (A)
Affiliations:	(A): Tohoku University, Graduate School of Agricultural Science (B): National Institute of Vegetable and Tea Science (C): Research Institute of Seed Production (D): Iwate Biotechnology Research Center (E): Kazusa DNA Research Institute

A mutant lacking most of the reticulate pattern of pollen exine, faceless pollen-1 (flp1), was identified in T-DNA tagging lines. Scanning electron microscopy demonstrated that the pollen exine of the mutant was almost smooth lacking most of the reticulate pattern, and was easily damaged by chemical fixation, suggesting a component of exine, sporopollenin, was defected in the mutant. The mutant was revealed to be sporophytic male sterile, although fertility was restored in high-humid condition. In addition, the stem had reduced amounts of wax crystals. A predicted amino acid sequence of the cDNA corresponding to the tagged gene, flp1, showed sequence similarity to proteins involved in wax biosynthesis. Northern blot analysis indicated that the flp1 gene was highly expressed in flower buds and weakly in leaves of wild-type plants and nothing in the mutant. The FLP1 protein is likely to play a role in the synthesis of both sporopollenin of exine and wax of stems and leaves.