CAROTENOID CLEAVAGE DIOXYGENASE4 Is a Negative Regulator of β-Carotene Content in Arabidopsis Seeds

Experimental approaches targeting carotenoid biosynthetic enzymes have successfully increased the seed β-carotene content of crops. However, linkage analysis of seed carotenoids in Arabidopsis thaliana recombinant inbred populations showed that only 21% of quantitative trait loci, including those fo...

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Published inThe Plant cell Vol. 25; no. 12; pp. 4812 - 4826
Main Authors Gonzalez-Jorge, Sabrina, Ha, Sun-Hwa, Magallanes-Lundback, Maria, Gilliland, Laura Ullrich, Zhou, Ailing, Lipka, Alexander E., Nguyen, Yen-Nhu, Angelovici, Ruthie, Lin, Haining, Cepela, Jason, Little, Holly, Buell, C. Robin, Gore, Michael A., DellaPenna, Dean
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published England American Society of Plant Biologists 01.12.2013
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Summary:Experimental approaches targeting carotenoid biosynthetic enzymes have successfully increased the seed β-carotene content of crops. However, linkage analysis of seed carotenoids in Arabidopsis thaliana recombinant inbred populations showed that only 21% of quantitative trait loci, including those for β-carotene, encode carotenoid biosynthetic enzymes in their intervals. Thus, numerous locl remain uncharacterized and underutilized in biofortification approaches. Linkage mapping and genome-wide association studies of Arabidopsis seed carotenoids identified CAROTENOID CLEAVAGE DIOXYGENASE4 (CCD4) as a major negative regulator of seed carotenoid content, especially β-carotene. Loss of CCD4 function did not affect carotenoid homeostasis during seed development but greatly reduced carotenoid degradation during seed desiccation, increasing β-carotene content 8.4-fold relative to the wild type. Allelic complementation of a ccd4 null mutant demonstrated that single-nucleotide polymorphisms and insertions and deletions at the locus affect dry seed carotenoid content, due at least partly to differences in CCD4 expression. CCD4 also plays a major role in carotenoid turnover during dark-induced leaf senescence, with β-carotene accumulation again most strongly affected in the ccd4 mutant. These results demonstrate that CCD4 plays a major role in β-carotene degradation in drying seeds and senescing leaves and suggest that CCD4 orthologs would be promising targets for stabilizing and increasing the level of provitamin A carotenoids in seeds of major food crops.
Bibliography:These authors contributed equally to this work.
The author responsible for distribution of materials integral to the findings presented in this article in accordance with the policy described in the Instructions for Authors (www.plantcell.org) is: Dean DellaPenna (dellapen@msu.edu).
Online version contains Web-only data.
www.plantcell.org/cgi/doi/10.1105/tpc.113.119677
ISSN:1040-4651
1532-298X
DOI:10.1105/tpc.113.119677