and found only in some low- yielding rice varieties in India and Sri Lanka. Her lab is renowned for having characterized the roles of the SUB1A gene that has been bred into modern rice varieties to allow plants to survive two weeks or longer of complete submergence caused by Monsoon rains. In the current work, the researchers performed their experiments on Arabidopsis, a small flowering plant used widely in plant biology laboratories as a model organism. SUB1A-like proteins are present in other plants, including Arabidopsis. While the protein turnover


mechanism targets SUB1A-like proteins in Arabidopsis, the researchers found, to their surprise, that rice SUB1A is resistant to the protein turnover mechanism. “We think that SUB1A’s ability to evade destruction by the protein turnover mechanism under normal oxygen levels may allow it to provide its benefit to


submerged rice plants,” Bailey- Serres said. “The SUB1A gene is switched on by ethylene gas that accumulates inside cells during submergence. Since the protein does not require a scarcity of oxygen to be stable, it can go to work early to aid the plant.”


Holdsworth, an


international expert in seed biology and a protein turnover mechanism called the “N-end rule pathway of targeted proteolysis,” had the first hint of the discovery while investigating the regulation of gene expression during seed germination. He connected the N-end rule pathway to the Arabidopsis SUB1A-like proteins and their regulation of genes associated with low oxygen stress that Bailey- Serres has studied extensively in Arabidopsis.


“The puzzle pieces fell quickly into place when the


British Columbia Berry Grower • Winter 2011-12 17


expertise of the two teams was combined,” he said. The research team expects that over the next decade scientists will be able to manipulate the protein turnover


mechanism in a wide range of crops prone to damage by flooding. Bailey-Serres and Holdsworth and were joined in the study by Seung Cho Lee (co-first author), a graduate


student, and Takeshi Fukao, an associate specialist in botany and plant sciences, at UCR; Daniel Gibbs (co-first author), Nurukhikma Md Isa, Silvia Gramuglia, George W. Bassel, and Cristina Sousa Correia at The University of Nottingham; Francoise Corbineau at the Universite Pierre and Marie Curie, France; and Frederica L. Theodoulou at Rothamsted


Research, United Kingdom.


Bailey-Serres’s group was supported by grants from the US Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture and the US National Science


Foundation. Holdsworth’s group was funded for this research project by the UK Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council.


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