Affiliation:
1. Institute of Biotechnology Beijing Academy of Agriculture and Forestry Sciences Beijing 100097 China
2. MOE Key Laboratory of Crop Heterosis and Utilization, National Maize Improvement Center of China, College of Agronomy and Biotechnology China Agricultural University Beijing 100193 China
3. Key Laboratory of Seed Innovation, Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology Chinese Academy of Sciences Beijing 100101 China
Abstract
SUMMARYElaborate cell‐cycle control must be adopted to ensure the continuity of the meiotic second division and termination after that. Despite its importance, however, the genetic controls underlying the meiotic cell cycle have not been reported in maize. Here, we characterized a meiotic cell‐cycle controller ZmTDM1, which is a homolog of Arabidopsis TDM1 and encodes a canonical tetratricopeptide repeat domain protein in maize. The Zmtdm1 homozygous plants exhibited complete male sterility and severe female abortion. In Zmtdm1 mutants, cell‐cycle progression was almost identical to that of wild type from leptotene to anaphase II. However, chromosomes in the tetrad failed meiotic termination at the end of the second division and underwent additional divisions in succession without DNA replication, reducing the ploidy to less than haploid in the product. In addition, two ZmTDM1‐like homologs (ZmTDML1 and ZmTDML2) were not functional in meiotic cell‐cycle control. Moreover, ZmTDM1 interacted with RING‐type E3 ubiquitin ligase, revealing that it acts as a subunit of the APC/C E3 ubiquitin ligase complex. Overall, our results identified a regulator of meiotic cell cycle in maize and demonstrated that ZmTDM1 is essential for meiotic exit after meiosis II.
Funder
National Natural Science Foundation of China
Subject
Cell Biology,Plant Science,Genetics