Carbohydrate import into seeds directly
determines seed size and must have been increased through domestication.
However, evidence of the domestication of sugar translocation and the
identities of seed-filling transporters have been elusive.
Corn ZmSWEET4c, as opposed to its
sucrose-transporting homologs, mediates transepithelial hexose transport across
the basal endosperm transfer layer (BETL), the entry point of nutrients into
the seed, and shows signatures indicative of selection during domestication.
Mutants of both corn ZmSWEET4c and its rice ortholog OsSWEET4 are defective in
seed filling, indicating that a lack of hexose transport at the BETL impairs
further transfer of sugars imported from the maternal phloem. In both corn and
rice, SWEET4 was likely recruited during domestication to enhance sugar import
into the endosperm, according to the research conducted by Davide Sosso,
Dangping Luo, Qin-Bao Li, Joelle Sasse, Jinliang Yang, Ghislaine Gendrot,
Masaharu Suzuki, Karen E Koch, Donald R McCarty, Prem S Chourey, Peter M
Rogowsky, Jeffrey Ross-Ibarra, Bing Yang & Wolf B Frommer.
*News on Nature Genetics, a journal
publishes high quality researches in genetics.
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