Starch is the major storage carbohydrate in higher plants and of considerable importance for the human diet and for numerous technical applications. In addition, starch can be accumulated transiently in chloroplasts as a temporary deposit of carbohydrates during ongoing photosynthesis. This transitory starch has to be mobilized during the subsequent dark period. Mutants defective in starch mobilization are characterized by high starch contents in leaves after prolonged periods of darkness and therefore are termed starch excess (sex) mutants. Here we describe the molecular characterization of the Arabidopsis sex1 mutant that has been proposed to be defective in the export of glucose resulting from hydrolytic starch breakdown. The mutated gene in sex1 was cloned using a map-based cloning approach. By complementation of the mutant, immunological analysis, and analysis of starch phosphorylation, we show that sex1 is defective in the Arabidopsis homolog of the R1 protein and not in the hexose transporter. We propose that the SEX1 protein (R1) functions as an overall regulator of starch mobilization by controlling the phosphate content of starch.
In this study, our goal was to evaluate the role of starch debranching enzymes in the determination of the structure of amylopectin. We screened mutant populations of Arabidopsis for plants with alterations in the structure of leaf starch by using iodine staining. The leaves of two mutant lines stained reddish brown, whereas wild-type leaves stained brownish black, indicating that a more highly branched polyglucan than amylopectin was present. The mutants were allelic, and the mutation mapped to position 18.8 on chromosome 1. One mutant line lacked the transcript for a gene with sequence similarity to higher plant debranching enzymes, and both mutants lacked a chloroplastic starch-hydrolyzing enzyme. This enzyme was identified as a debranching enzyme of the isoamylase type. The loss of this isoamylase resulted in a 90% reduction in the accumulation of starch in this mutant line when compared with the wild type and in the accumulation of the highly branched water-soluble polysaccharide phytoglycogen. Both normal starch and phytoglycogen accumulated simultaneously in the same chloroplasts in the mutant lines, suggesting that isoamylase has an indirect rather than a direct role in determining amylopectin structure.
We report that protein phosphorylation is involved in the control of starch metabolism in Arabidopsis leaves at night. sex4 (starch excess 4) mutants, which have strongly reduced rates of starch metabolism, lack a protein predicted to be a dual specificity protein phosphatase. We have shown that this protein is chloroplastic and can bind to glucans and have presented evidence that it acts to regulate the initial steps of starch degradation at the granule surface. Remarkably, the most closely related protein to SEX4 outside the plant kingdom is laforin, a glucanbinding protein phosphatase required for the metabolism of the mammalian storage carbohydrate glycogen and implicated in a severe form of epilepsy (Lafora disease) in humans.Starch, the main storage carbohydrate of plants, accumulates as a product of photosynthesis in leaves during the day and is converted to sucrose for export from the leaves at night. This conversion of starch to sucrose is one of the largest daily carbon fluxes on the planet, but nothing is known about how the process is initiated and controlled. The amounts of enzymes on the pathway change very little through the diurnal cycle in leaves of the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana, hence flux must be controlled by modulation of their activities (1).Much progress in understanding the pathway has been made through the selection of Arabidopsis mutants impaired in starch degradation at night. All such mutations identified thus far are in genes encoding enzymes of the pathway, rather than proteins likely to be involved in modulation of the activities of these enzymes (2-11). However, a mutation at a locus not yet identified, the starch excess 4 (or SEX4) locus, gives rise to a phenotype indicative of a regulatory defect rather than a defect in a structural enzyme. Mature sex4 leaves contain three to four times more starch than those of wild-type plants, apparently because a reduced capacity for starch degradation at night leads to progressive accumulation of starch over the life of the leaf (12, 13). Starch granules in leaves of the sex4 mutant are much larger and more rounded than those of wild-type plants (14). Measurements of activity and protein of enzymes known to be involved in starch degradation revealed only one significant reduction in the sex4 mutant in the chloroplastic ␣-amylase AMY3 (12, 15). However, although both the activity and amount of protein of AMY3 are strongly reduced, this is not the cause of the deficiency in starch degradation in the sex4 mutant. T-DNA insertion lines lacking AMY3 protein have normal rates of starch degradation (15). The aim of the work described in this paper was to discover the nature of the gene at the SEX4 locus and thus shed light on the regulation of starch degradation. EXPERIMENTAL PROCEDURESPositional Identification of the SEX4 Locus-F2 plants from a cross between sex4-2 (Col-0 background) and Landsberg erecta showing the mutant phenotype were used for mapping. The mapping population (562 plants) was genotyped using SSLP and SNP markers availabl...
The Arabidopsis thaliana genome encodes three ␣-amylase-like proteins (AtAMY1, AtAMY2, and AtAMY3). Only AtAMY3 has a predicted N-terminal transit peptide for plastidial localization. AtAMY3 is an unusually large ␣-amylase (93.5 kDa) with the C-terminal half showing similarity to other known ␣-amylases. When expressed in Escherichia coli, both the whole AtAMY3 protein and the C-terminal half alone show ␣-amylase activity. We show that AtAMY3 is localized in chloroplasts. The starch-excess mutant of Arabidopsis sex4, previously shown to have reduced plastidial ␣-amylase activity, is deficient in AtAMY3 protein. Unexpectedly, T-DNA knock-out mutants of AtAMY3 have the same diurnal pattern of transitory starch metabolism as the wild type. These results show that AtAMY3 is not required for transitory starch breakdown and that the starch-excess phenotype of the sex4 mutant is not caused simply by deficiency of AtAMY3 protein. Knockout mutants in the predicted non-plastidial ␣-amylases AtAMY1 and AtAMY2 were also isolated, and these displayed normal starch breakdown in the dark as expected for extraplastidial amylases. Furthermore, all three AtAMY double knock-out mutant combinations and the triple knock-out degraded their leaf starch normally. We conclude that ␣-amylase is not necessary for transitory starch breakdown in Arabidopsis leaves.
We isolated pgi1-1, an Arabidopsis mutant with a decreased plastid phospho-glucose (Glc) isomerase activity. While pgi1-1 mutant has a deficiency in leaf starch synthesis, it accumulates starch in root cap cells. It has been shown that a plastid transporter for hexose phosphate transports cytosolic Glc-6-P into plastids and expresses restricted mainly to the heterotrophic tissues. The decreased starch content in leaves of the pgi1-1 mutant indicates that cytosolic Glc-6-P cannot be efficiently transported into chloroplasts to complement the mutant's deficiency in chloroplastic phospho-Glc isomerase activity for starch synthesis. We cloned the Arabidopsis PGI1 gene and showed that it encodes the plastid phospho-Glc isomerase. The pgi1-1 allele was found to have a single nucleotide substitution, causing a Ser to Phe transition. While the flowering times of the Arabidopsis starch-deficient mutants pgi1, pgm1, and adg1 were similar to that of the wild type under long-day conditions, it was significantly delayed under short-day conditions. The pleiotropic phenotype of late flowering conferred by these starch metabolic mutations suggests that carbohydrate metabolism plays an important role in floral initiation.Most plants synthesize starch in their chloroplasts during photosynthesis and degrade it during the subsequent night. The regulation of transitory starch metabolism in photosynthetic tissues is clearly different from the long-term, reserve starch metabolism in non-photosynthetic tissues (Caspar, 1994). Many mutations that affect the starch of certain cereal seeds, potato, pea, and Chlamydomonas reinhardtii have been isolated and characterized (Hannah, 1997). Although studies of these mutants have greatly added to our knowledge of starch metabolism, these mutants studied are relatively specific for the reserve and reproductive organs, and do not affect starch metabolism in the vegetative parts of plants. Mutants that affect starch metabolism in the vegetative parts of Arabidopsis would be useful to extend our understanding on starch metabolism and its role in the plant.Previously, several nuclear-encoded, recessive mutants of Arabidopsis, pgm1, adg1, and adg2, were isolated and characterized for their low starch content or lack of starch in leaves (Caspar et al
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