2012 Rustbelt RNA Meeting
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Poster number 26 submitted by Liuyin Ma

The role of polyadenylation in seed germination: Defining the trans(crypto)me

Liuyin Ma (Dept. of Plant and Soil Sciences, University of Kentucky, KY, USA), Pratap Kumar Pati (Dept. of Biotechnology, Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar, India), Allan Bruce Downie (Dept. of Horticulture, University of Kentucky, KY, USA), Arthur G. Hunt (Dept. of Plant and Soil Sciences, University of Kentucky, KY, USA)

Abstract:
In Xenopus, maternal stored mRNAs with a short poly (A) tail (less than 40nt) are repressed by a deadenylase (PARN) before oocyte maturation (1). However, those mRNAs are activated by a cytoplasmic poly (A) polymerase (GLD-2) associating with the cytoplasmic polyadenylation complex and function in oocyte maturation (1).

In plants, cytoplasmic polyadenylation has not been described. However, it has been reported that seeds contain a sizeable population of stored mRNA (2). In addition, germination and its completion are less sensitive to de novo transcription inhibitors than to poly (A) polymerase inhibitors (3,4). Together, these considerations suggest that stored RNA with a short poly (A) tail (stored spRNA) may have a function in seed germination upon reactivation by cytoplasmic polyadenylation. To further explore this, mRNA polyadenylation has been studied through the course of germination using a combination of transcriptional inhibitors and a modified RNA-seq strategy (5). Using this approach, several putative stored spRNAs have been identified. These stored spRNAs candidates are being further characterized using S1 nuclease protection- and qRT-PCR-assays. Progress along these lines will be discussed.

References:
1. Villalba A, Coll O, Gebauer F. 2011.Curr Opin Genet Dev 4:452-7.
2. Harris, B., and L. Dure, 3rd. 1978. Biochemistry 17:3250-6.

3. Tao, K. L., and A. A. Khan. 1976. Plant Physiol 58:769-772.

4. Datta, K., L. Marsh, and A. Marcus. 1983. Plant Physiol 72:394-397.
5. Wu, X., Liu, M., Downie, B., Liang, C., Ji, G., Li, Q. Q., and Hunt, A. G. 2011. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 108:12533-12538.

Keywords: cytoplasmic polyadenylation, stored RNA, seed germination