Feng Bai: Plant Physiology First Author

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Feng Bai, co-first author of “Natural Allelic Variation in GRAIN SIZE AND WEIGHT 3 of Wild Rice Regulates the Grain Size and Weight”

Current Position: Teacher in Chengdu primary school

Education: 2015 – 2019, Chengdu Normal University, B.S., Biological Sciences

2019 – 2022, South China Agricultural University, M.S., Genetics,

Interests: Music, movies

Personal Description:

I entered South China Agricultural University in 2019 to pursue my master’s degree in genetics in the College of Agriculture, under the supervision of Associate Professor Lan Wang, and my research interests are cloning and functional studies of rice grain shape genes. In this paper, we find a wild rice natural variant fragment, a QTL (GSW3) located on chromosome 3, which encodes a GTPase regulatory protein. Combined with CRISPR/Cas9 technology, scanning electron microscopy, transcriptome analysis and haplotype analysis showed that GSW3 is a gene that regulates grain shape; functional analysis showed that this gene negatively regulates rice grain length and width by promoting rice seed cell division and longitudinal and lateral cell elongation. Further, GSW3 was found to negatively regulate plant growth through the gibberellin (GA) signaling pathway. In addition, a key SNP in the coding region of GSW3 was significantly associated with seed size variation in core cultivated rice species. This SNP resulted in the substitution of amino acid at position 161 in GSW3 from Gln to Arg, which reduced the seed size. Our study suggests that GSW3 is a negative regulator of grain shape in rice, which can explain the difference in grain shape between modern cultivated rice and wild rice, and can be used to select rice varieties with improved grain shape and higher yield.

论文：Natural Allelic Variation in GRAIN SIZE AND WEIGHT 3 of Wild Rice Regulates the Grain Size and Weight

第一作者：白冯

现在职业：成都小学教师

教育经历：2015 – 2019，成都师范学院，生物科学，学士

2019 – 2022，华南农业大学，遗传学，硕士

兴趣爱好：音乐，电影

个人介绍：

我于2019年进入华南农业大学农学院遗传学专业攻读硕士学位，师从王兰副教授，研究方向为水稻粒型基因的克隆和功能研究。在本文中，我们找到一个野生稻自然变异片段，即位于3号染色体上的QTL（GSW3），它编码一种GTP酶调节蛋白。结合CRISPR/Cas9技术，扫描电子显微镜技术、转录组分析和单倍型分析表明，GSW3是一个调控粒形的基因；功能分析表明该基因通过促进水稻籽粒细胞分裂及纵向和横向细胞伸长，负向调节水稻粒长和粒宽。进一步发现 GSW3通过赤霉素(GA) 信号通路，负向调节植物生长。 此外， GSW3 编码区中的一个关键 SNP 与核心栽培稻种的籽粒大小变化显着相关。 该 SNP 导致 GSW3 中第 161 位的氨基酸从 Gln 替换为 Arg，从而减小了籽粒尺寸。 我们的研究表明 GSW3是水稻粒形的负调控因子，可以解释现代栽培稻和野生稻粒形不同的原因， 可用于选育粒形改良、产量较高的水稻品种。