Abstract
Seedling greening is essential for the survival of plants emerging from the soil. The abundance of chlorophyll precursors, including protochlorophyllide (Pchlide), is precisely controlled during the dark-to-light transition, as over-accumulation of Pchlide can lead to cellular photooxidative damage. Previous studies have identified and characterized multiple regulators controlling this important process. HID1 (hidden treasure 1) is the first noncoding RNA (ncRNA) found in photomorphogenesis. Under continuous red light, HID1 has been shown to inhibit hypocotyl elongation by repressing the transcription of PIF3 (phytochrome interacting factor 3). Here, we report that HID1 acts as a negative regulator of cotyledon greening. Knockdown of HID1 resulted in an increased greening rate of etiolated seedlings relative to wild type when exposed to white light. Genetically, HID1 acts downstream of PIF3 during the dark-to-light transition. The expression of HID1 is not regulated by PIF3 in the dark. Molecularly, the Pchlide content was reduced in dark-grown hid1 mutants than WT. Meanwhile, transcript levels of the protochlorophyllide oxidoreductases known to catalyze Pchlide to chlorophyllide conversion were significantly increased in hid1 seedlings. Thus, our study reveals an additional role of HID1 in the dark-to-light transition in Arabidopsis. Moreover, these results suggest HID1 could regulate distinct targets in different light-mediated developmental processes, and thus is essential to the control of these mechanisms.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Dr. Peter Quail (UC Berkley, USA) for providing pif3-3 mutant seeds and Dr. Giltsu Choi (KAIST, Korea) for providing the PIF3OX line. We thank Abigail Coplin for critical reading of the manuscript. This work was supported by National Key Basic Research Program (2016YFA0500800), China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2015M580013 to Yuqiu Wang), Major Program of National Natural Science Foundation of China (91540105 to Danmeng Zhu), and Junior Program of National Natural Science Foundation of China (31500974 to Yuqiu Wang). We also received support from the State Key Laboratory of Protein and Plant Gene Research at Peking University, and Peking-Tsinghua Center for Life Sciences. Yuqiu Wang and Jian Li are supported in part by the postdoctoral fellowship of Peking-Tsinghua Center for Life Sciences. Yuqiu Wang is supported in part by Boya postdoctoral fellowship of Peking University.
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Wang, Y., Li, J., Deng, XW. et al. Arabidopsis noncoding RNA modulates seedling greening during deetiolation. Sci. China Life Sci. 61, 199–203 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11427-017-9187-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11427-017-9187-9