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Legume Genomics and Genetics (online), 2010, Vol. 1, No.2, 7-10
http://lgg.sophiapublisher.com
Research Article Open Access
Mutations Affecting Lateral Petal Development in
Lotus japonicus
Jiechen Wang , Zhaoxia Tian , Zhong Zhao , Da Luo , Xiaohe Hu
Institute of Plant Physiology and Ecology, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, National Key Laboratory of Plant
Molecular Genetics, Shanghai, 200032
Corresponding author email: xhhu@sippe.ac.cn;
Authors
Legume Genomics and Genetics 2010, Vol.1 No.2 DOI:10.5376/lgg.2010.01.0002
Received: 21 Jun., 2010
Accepted: 11 Sep., 2010
Published: 27 Sep., 2010
This article was first published in Fenzi Zhiwu Yuzhong (Molecular Plant Breeding) in Chinese, and here was authorized to translate and publish the paper in
English under the terms of Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the
original work is properly cited.
Preferred citation for this article as:
Wang et al., 2010, Mutations affecting lateral petal development in
Lotus japonicus
, Fenzi Zhiwu Yuzhong (Molecular Plant Breeding), 8(1): 6-10 (DOI:
10.3969/mpb.008.000006)
Abstract
To investigate the genetic loci to regulate the development of petal shape, screening of the mutation affecting lateral petal
development was conducted in a model plant of legume,
Lotus japonicus
. Two independent mutants,
kew2
and
kew3
with the similar
phenotype were obtained, whose shape of lateral petal is altered and resembles the one of ventral petal in the wild type. Genetic
analysis showed that
kew3 was
caused by the same single recessive locus and allelic to the one of
kew1
, a formal identified mutant in
the locus
KEW1. KEW1
has been shown to be an ortholog of
K
in pea, but whose mutation at the molecular level is unsolved yet.
Furthermore, genetic analyses of
kew2
indicate that there are other genetic factors which could interact with
kew
and involve in the
lateral petal development. Analysis of these mutations and cloning the corresponding loci will shield light on the underlying
molecular mechanism in the control of floral asymmetry and facilitate our understanding on the evolution of the zygomorphic
development.
Keywords
Lotus japonicus
; Mutagenesis;
Keeled-wing
locus; Floral symmetry
Background
Lotus japonicus
belongs to the subfamily Papilionoideae,
being named after its unique papilionaceous (butterfly-like)
flowers, and provides an excellent experimental system
to investigate the molecular mechanisms in the control
of zygomorphic flower development.
L. japonicus
has
been adopted as a model legume plant in genomic and
the molecular genetic study in the late 1980s, being
recognized for its relative simple genome structure,
small genome size, feasible for genetic transformation
and other unique characteristics (Arumuganathan et al.,
1991; Handberg and Stougaard, 1992; Blondon et al.,
1994; Greilhuber et al., 1997; Asamizu et al., 2000;
Kawasaki and Murakami, 2000; Sandal N, et al., 2002).
In recent years, there has been a great progress in leg-
ume genomics due to the genome sequencing program
in a few model legume plants, including the one of
L.
japonicus
(Lamblin et al., 2003; Cannon et al., 2005;
Sato et al., 2008; Shoemaker et al., 2008; Grant et al.,
2009). Nevertheless, screening mutants is still an effi-
cient research strategy to identify the key genes in the
regulatory network controlling important biological
process. In the previous study, we have reported
several important loci being found in the mutagenesis
and a few important key regulators in the control of
floral development were cloned from our mutagenized
population of
L. japonicus
(Dong et al., 2005; Chen et
al., 2006; Feng et al., 2006).
L. japonicus
possesses the flowers which are zygomorphy
and display the dorsoventral (DV) asymmetry: there is
a DV axis in their floral plane, along which there exist a
dorsal, two lateral and two ventral petals; three types of
petals are different in shape and size (Figure 1a). In the
previous study, a mutation,
keeled wing in Lotus 1
(
kew1
), was analyzed (Figure 1b; Feng et al., 2006),
which affects the development of lateral petal and is
named for its similar phenotype to the mutant
keeled
wing
(
k
) in pea (Pellew and Sverdrup, 1923; Ellis et al.,
1992). Mutant flowers of both
kew1
and
k
bear the
aberrant lateral petals which acquire the same identity
as the one of ventral petal in the wild type (Figure 1b).
Comparative mapping experiment demonstrated that
KEW1
and
K
should be the orthologous regulators and
play an important role in the control of lateral petal
development in papilionoid legumes (Feng et al., 2006).
Recently,
K
has been cloned and is found to encode a
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