Authors: Arun Viswanathan Boney Kuriakose Shantharam Bharadwaj George Thomas
Publish Date: 2011/02/12
Volume: 29, Issue: 4, Pages: 825-834
Abstract
Expression of many proteinases has been documented during anther development Although their roles are not completely understood their inhibition could possibly result in impairment of anther development leading to male sterility We proposed that such an impairment of anther development can be engineered in plants resulting in male sterile plants that can be used for hybrid seed production Here we report that antherspecific expression of Aprotinin gene serine proteinase inhibitor in tobacco has resulted in male sterility Southern analysis and zymogram analysis confirmed the integration and expression of Aprotinin gene in the anthers of the transgenic plants Transverse sections of anthers of transgenic male sterile plants showed damaged tapetum The pollen germination in the transgenic plants ranged between 2 and 65 that confirmed the impairment in pollen production leading to male sterility and low seed yield Thus inhibition of serine proteinases that are expressed during anther development has resulted in impaired pollen production and male sterility though the exact role of these proteinases in anther development still has to be elucidatedAuthor AV and BK thank the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research for the research fellowship Valuable suggestions of Prof TS Lokeswari and Dr KK Kumar during the course of the work and in manuscript preparation are acknowledged The authors gratefully acknowledge the timely help from Dr Samuel S Gnanamanickam Dr N Anand and Dr Ajay Parida in providing lab facilities as well as a greenhouse for part of the work
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