Research Progress and Application of Plant Branching

Plant branching development plays an important role in plant morphogenesis(aboveground plant type),the number and angle of branches are important agronomic characters that determine crop plant type.Effective branches determine the number of panicles or pods of crops and then control the yield of crops.With the rapid development of plant genomics and molecular genetics,great progress has been made in the study of branching development.In recent years,a series of important branching-related genes have been validated from Arabidopsis thaliana,rice,pea,tomato and maize mutants.It is reviewed that plant branching development is controlled by genetic elements and plant hormones,such as auxin,cytokinin and lactones(or lactone derivatives),as well as by environment and genetic elements.Meanwhile,shoot architecture in crop breeding was discussed in order to provide theoretical basis for the study of crop branching regulation.

SB1 Encoding RING-Like Zinc-Finger Protein Regulates Branch Development as a Transcription Repressor

Inflorescence structure of rice,including the number and length of branches,and the density of the spikelet,can greatly affect the number of grains per panicle,which is one of the key factors in yield compositions.Here we identified five allelic mutants sb1-1/2/3/4/5 that related to branch development of rice.In these mutants,the branch meristem fate was prolonged sharply,resulting in delay of transition from branches to spikelets,and then increased the numbers of branches and spikelets per panicle.SB1 encodes a nuclear RING-like domain protein of SHI/LRP/SRS family and strongly expressed in branch meristems.The results of protein interaction and chromatin immunoprecipitation further suggested that SB1 directly repressed the expression of DEP1,TAW1,MOC1 and IPA1 by interacting with a co-repressor complex to affect acetylation level of histone H3 on target regions.Thus,we proposed that SB1 is a transcription repressor of branch meristem activity by widely and negatively regulating a series of genes that maintain branch meristem fate.

Molecular Basis of Unique Branching Phenotypes in Salvia splendens and the Role of PSY

The branching system of higher plants plays a very important role in plant morphogenesis,and the number of branches can directly affect crop yield and the ornamental value of plants.It is a complicated development process involving complex molecular mechanisms.The‘Cailinghong’variety of Salvia splendens is characterized by its great branching ability with the ability to grow into a spherical form naturally,without pinching.To gain insight into the molecular events during the branching development of S.splendens,suppressive subtractive hybridization(SSH)technology was used to screen differentially expressed genes between the erect plant type(strain 35)and the spherical plant type(‘Cailinghong’).In total,96 and 116 unigenes were annotated.Four and eight unigenes up-regulated in‘Cailinghong’and strain 35,respectively,were associated with plant hormone anabolism and signal transduction,suggesting that they participate in the branching process.One of these genes,phytoene synthase(PSY),is a precursor of the new plant hormone group strigolactones.Using the PSY fragment(192 bp)as a template,the cDNA sequence of PSY in S.splendens was cloned and named SsPSY.A relative expression analysis and transgenic test results indicated that SsPSY plays an important role in lateral branch development in‘Cailinghong’.These results provide new insight into the molecular mechanisms underlying branching in S.splendens.