Transgenic Maize Lines with Cell-Type Specific Expression of Fluorescent Proteins in Plastids
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Agronomy & Horticulture -- Faculty Publications Agronomy and Horticulture Department 2010 Transgenic maize lines with cell-type specific expression of fluorescent proteins in plastids Amir Sattarzadeh Cornell University, Ithaca Jonathan Fuller Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research Salvador Moguel University of Nebraska-Lincoln & Union College, Lincoln Katia Wostrikoff Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research & IBPC Shirley Sato University of Nebraska-Lincoln See next page for additional authors Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/agronomyfacpub Part of the Agricultural Science Commons, Agriculture Commons, Agronomy and Crop Sciences Commons, Botany Commons, Horticulture Commons, Other Plant Sciences Commons, and the Plant Biology Commons Sattarzadeh, Amir; Fuller, Jonathan; Moguel, Salvador; Wostrikoff, Katia; Sato, Shirley; Covshoff, Sarah; Clemente, Tom; Hanson, Maureen; and Stern, David, "Transgenic maize lines with cell-type specific expression of fluorescent proteins in plastids" (2010). Agronomy & Horticulture -- Faculty Publications. 1372. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/agronomyfacpub/1372 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Agronomy and Horticulture Department at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Agronomy & Horticulture -- Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. Authors Amir Sattarzadeh, Jonathan Fuller, Salvador Moguel, Katia Wostrikoff, Shirley Sato, Sarah Covshoff, Tom Clemente, Maureen Hanson, and David Stern This article is available at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/ agronomyfacpub/1372 Plant Biotechnology Journal (2010) 8, pp. 112–125 doi: 10.1111/j.1467-7652.2009.00463.x Transgenic maize lines with cell-type specific expression of fluorescent proteins in plastids Amir Sattarzadeh1, Jonathan Fuller2, Salvador Moguel3,†, Katia Wostrikoff2,‡,ShirleySato3, Sarah Covshoff2,§, Tom Clemente3, Maureen Hanson1 and David B. Stern2,* 1Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA 2Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research, Tower Rd., Ithaca, NY, USA 3Department of Agronomy & Horticulture, Center for Biotechnology, Center for Plant Science Innovation, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, NE, USA Received 4 April 2009; Summary revised 9 September 2009; Plastid number and morphology vary dramatically between cell types and at accepted 12 September 2009. different developmental stages. Furthermore, in C4 plants such as maize, *Correspondence (Tel 254 1306; fax 607 254 6779; e-mail [email protected]) chloroplast ultrastructure and biochemical functions are specialized in mesophyll †Present address: Division of Science & and bundle sheath cells, which differentiate acropetally from the proplastid form Mathematics, Union College, Lincoln, NE, USA. in the leaf base. To develop visible markers for maize plastids, we have created a ‡Present address: IBPC, 13 rue Pierre et series of stable transgenics expressing fluorescent proteins fused to either the Marie Curie, Paris, France. maize ubiquitin promoter, the mesophyll-specific phosphoenolpyruvate carboxylase §Present address: Department of Plant Sciences, University of Cambridge, (PepC) promoter, or the bundle sheath-specific Rubisco small subunit 1 (RbcS) Cambridge, United Kingdom. promoter. Multiple independent events were examined and revealed that maize Accession numbers: GQ221700 (mzYFP), GQ221701 (mzGFP), GQ221702 (mzBFP). codon-optimized versions of YFP and GFP were particularly well expressed, and that expression was stably inherited. Plants carrying PepC promoter constructs exhibit YFP expression in mesophyll plastids and the RbcS promoter mediated expression in bundle sheath plastids. The PepC and RbcS promoter fusions also proved useful for identifying plastids in organs such as epidermis, silks, roots and Keywords: fluorescent protein, trichomes. These tools will inform future plastid-related studies of wild-type and transgenic, chloroplast, bundle mutant maize plants and provide material from which different plastid types may sheath, mesophyll. be isolated. et al., 1999). Despite these advances, the signals that Introduction regulate cell type specification and plastid morphology are Maize has a long history as a model for plastid biology still poorly understood. and is of particular importance as a platform for studying A valuable tool for investigating organelle number and the biochemistry and developmental biology of C4 photo- morphology is labelling with fluorescent proteins (FPs). synthesis. The successive maturation of chloroplasts from Among numerous applications have been studies of mito- proplastids from leaf base to tip was described nearly chondrial division in yeast (e.g. Tieu et al., 2002), observa- 35 years ago (Leech et al., 1973) and the dimorphism, or tions of plastids and plastid tubules (stromules) in higher Kranz anatomy of maize leaf chloroplasts in mesophyll vs. plants (Ko¨ hler et al., 1997a; Ko¨ hler and Hanson, 2000; bundle sheath cells was noted several years later (Miranda Kwok and Hanson, 2004; Hanson and Sattarzadeh, 2008), et al., 1981). The maize plastid gene expression apparatus and identification of mitochondria and mitochondrial (Maier et al., 1995) and proteome (Majeran et al., 2005) mutants in higher plants (Ko¨ hler et al., 1997b; Logan have also been scrutinized. Two mutants specifically defec- et al., 2003). In the case of plastids, the fluorescent tag tive in bundle sheath differentiation have been isolated has been expressed in the nucleus fused to a transit pep- (Langdale and Kidner, 1994; Roth et al., 1996) and later tide (Ko¨ hler et al., 1997b; Primavesi et al., 2008), fused to studied at the molecular level (Hall et al., 1998; Brutnell the entire coding region of lipoxygenase 10 (Mohanty ª 2009 The Authors 112 Journal compilation ª 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd Fluorescent proteins in maize plastids 113 et al., 2009), or expressed within the organelle following Table 2 Maize transformation summary* insertion of a cassette into the chloroplast genome (Shiina Plasmid et al., 2000; Reed et al., 2001). name Transit sequence from Cassette† Events‡ We commenced a project to test different fluorescent tags for labelling of maize plastids in stable transformants pPTN343 Maize cpRNA polymerase 35S ⁄ TP-GFP 7 pPTN372 Maize cpRNA polymerase OsActin ⁄ TP-GFP 14 and also to develop lines that labelled specifically either pPTN442 Pea Rubisco SS PepC ⁄ TP-GFP 5 bundle sheath or mesophyll chloroplasts. Three new maize pPTN448 Pea Rubisco SS UBi1 ⁄ TP-mzBFP 12 codon-optimized fluorescent protein coding regions were pPTN458 Pea Rubisco SS Ubi1 ⁄ TP-mzGFP 16 produced. We find that the promoter from a Rubisco small pPTN469 Pea Rubisco SS Ubi1 ⁄ TP-mzYFP 18 subunit-encoding gene can drive bundle sheath- pPTN512 Pea Rubisco SS PEPC ⁄ TP-mzYFP 7 pPTN533 Pea Rubisco SS RbcS1 ⁄ PsTP-mzYFP 21 specific expression and the PepC promoter results in expres- pPTN629 Maize Rubisco SS RbcS1 ⁄ ZmTP-mzYFP 7 sion in mesophyll cells. We were also able to visualize plast- ids in many organs. These transgenic lines should be useful *Cassettes in bold are those for which experimental data are presented to maize researchers studying various aspects of plastid here. †35S; CaMV 35S promoter; TP, chloroplast transit peptide; OsActin, rice development and should faciliate fluorescence-activated cell actin promoter; SS, small subunit; GFP, human codon-optimized GFP; mzFP sorting of bundle sheath and mesophyll plastids. coding regions, maize codon-optimized FPs as in Table 1. ‡Independent T0 events analysed by microscopy for fluorescent protein expression. Results Table 2 shows the series of chimeric genes used for sta- Development of transformation cassettes ble transformation of the maize recipient genotype Hi II. Our initial expression cassettes were constructed with the Our aim was to develop a cassette driving ubiquitous human codon-optimized green fluorescent protein (GFP) expression of a chloroplast-targeted GFP on one hand, that was shown to be effective for transient expression in and tissue-specific cassettes driving mesophyll or bundle maize protoplasts (Chiu et al., 1996). Subsequently, coding sheath chloroplast expression on the other hand. To deter- regions for three different variants of GFP were synthesized, mine the best promoter for strong general expression, we using preferred maize codons and incorporating appropri- tested the CaMV 35S and rice actin (Cao et al., 1992) pro- ate mutations with respect to the original jellyfish GFP moters, reasoning that the 35S promoter is widely used sequence. All three variants carry the Q80R mutation origi- for high expression and is known to function in trans- nally incorporated into most GFPs by accident, plus addi- formed maize callus (Fromm et al., 1986) and regenerated tional mutations known to enhance solubility or to cause plants (Gordon-Kamm et al., 1990). Although heterolo- spectral shifts to yellow or blue (Cormack et al., 1996; gous, the rice actin promoter was also initially tested, as it Crameri et al., 1996; Davis and Vierstra, 1998; Wachter is reputed to be stronger than the 35S promoter in mono- et al., 1998). The predicted protein sequences of mzGFP cot transformation (discussed in Prakash et al., 2008). We (mz; modified zea) and mzBFP are identical to smGFP and