Published Date

August 2016, Volume 30, Issue 4, pp 1303-1314

First online: 26 February 2016

Cloning and functional characterization of PjCAO gene involved in chlorophyll bbiosynthesis in Pseudosasa japonica cv. Akebonosuji

• Keyi Jiang
• , Mingbing Zhou 
• , Haiyun Yang
• , Wei Fang

Abstract

Key message

Not only the first systematic characterization of CAOgene in bamboo species, but also the first attempt to study the relationship between CAO gene expression and bamboo leaf color variation.

Abstract

Chlorophyllide a oxygenase (CAO) converts chlorophyllide (Chlide) a to Chlide b and hence plays an important role in chlorophyll (Chl) b biosynthesis. In this study, a cDNA of a CAO homologue designated PjCAO was isolated from Pseudosasa japonica cv. Akebonosuji that is a cultivar of high ornamental value in landscape due to its unique green-white striped leaf phenotype. The full-length cDNA of PjCAO was 2070 bp long with a 1626 bp open reading frame that encoded 541 amino acids. Multiple sequence alignment for amino acid showed that the putative PjCAO protein shared a high sequence similarity with CAO homologues from other plant species and consisted of four conserved parts, an amino-terminal transit peptide and three individual domains, namely, A, B, and C domain. Further, PjCAO was overexpressed in Arabidopsis thaliana; and the Chl b contents of these PjCAO-overexpressed plants were much higher than that of wild-type plants, thereby indicating its important role in Chl b synthesis. Reverse transcription real time quantitative polymerase chain reaction revealed that PjCAO was ubiquitously expressed in all the 14 tissue samples collected from P. japonica cv. Akebonosuji. Specifically, it was expressed at higher levels in 12 leaf samples than in culms and roots. Moreover, the expression of PjCAO kept increasing during the development of white, striped, and green leaf samples, thus indicating its potential role in leaf development. In addition, the expression levels of PjCAO in leaf samples within almost the same developmental stages fell into two distinct classes: high expression levels in green, and almost green with some white stripes samples; and low expression levels in white, and almost white with some green stripes samples. Collectively, these expression data suggest that PjCAO may be involved in the leaf color variation for P. japonica cv. Akebonosuji.

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