Root development is essential for the survival of plants. However, little information is available on root development, especially in monocot plants including rice (Orysa sativa) and maize (Zea mays). Therefore, I scrutinized the architecture of rice ...
Root development is essential for the survival of plants. However, little information is available on root development, especially in monocot plants including rice (Orysa sativa) and maize (Zea mays). Therefore, I scrutinized the architecture of rice roots and their responses to exogenously applied auxin-related chemicals. Because it was reported that melatonin and serotonin showed auxin effects in some plants, I tested the effect of melatonin and serotonin on rice root development, and observed no effect of the substances on the roots. In contrast, indole-3-acetonitrile (IAN), the substrate of nitrilases for auxin biosynthesis, revealed clear inhibitory effects on the elongation of the primary root, as 1-naphthaleneacetic acid (1-NAA), an artificial auxin, did. I also carried out mutant screening with a subset, i. e.,300 lines, of Ds-tagged population that was tagged with a transposable element As a result, mutant candidates possessing abnormal phenotypes in the primary- or crown-roots were selected, and some of them were cultivated for propagation on a test field of the Rural Developmental Administration located in Mil-yang. The adult plants displayed abnormal phnotypes; e.g., dark green leaves and no fruits. For the isolation ofdifferentially expressed RNAs between the primary- and the crown-root of rice, it was used that the Gene FishingTM DEG Discovery Service program (Seegene), using a series of random primers. The DEG detected 6 and 3 products that were specifically expressed in the primary root or in the crown-root, respsctively. Among them, I selected the most prominent three PCR products, and got sequence and the partial clones. So, we have three kind of root-type specific gene candidates. However, the Blast search did not reveal any function of the transcripts. I also studied about the distribution of nitrilase transcripts in the roots of maize by RT-PCR and in situ analysis. Using in situ techniques, the transcripts of ZmNIT2 was observed in pericycle and around of xylems. The range of nitrilase2 signal became narrower and concentrated to the tips in the primary root from 2 to 4 days after germination. However, no specific tissue specificity of ZmNIT2 was observed in the coleoptilar node.