Acetyl-coenzyme A carboxylase (ACCase) catalyzes the formation of malonyl-coenzyme A, which is used in the plastid for fatty acid synthesis and in the cytosol for several pathways including fatty acid elongation and flavonoid synthesis. Two overlapping Arabidopsis genomic clones were isolated and sequenced to determine the entire ACCase-coding region. Thirty introns with an average size of 94 b...

Turgor pressure plays pivotal roles in the growth and movement of walled cells that make up plants and fungi. However, the molecular mechanisms regulating turgor pressure and the coordination between turgor pressure and cell wall remodelling for cell growth remain poorly understood. Here, we report the characterization of Arabidopsis TurgOr regulation Defect 1 (TOD1), which is preferentially ex...

The study of flower development has experienced great advances over the last 15 years. The most important landmark was the proposal of the ABC model in which three different functions of overlapping activities account for the development of the four rings of organs of the eudicot flower. Most interestingly, during recent years this simple and elegant model has been broadly accepted and is appli...

Seeds of many plant species are green during embryogenesis. To directly assess the influence of light on the physiological status of green oilseeds in planta, Brassica napus and soybean (Glycine max) seeds were rapidly dissected from plants growing in the light or dark. The activation state of malate dehydrogenase, which reflects reduced thioredoxin and NADP/NADPH ratios, was found to be as hig...

The fate of sucrose (Suc) supplied via the phloem to developing oilseed rape (Brassica napus) seeds has been investigated by supplying [(14)C]Suc to pedicels of detached, developing siliques. The method gives high, sustained rates of lipid synthesis in developing embryos within the silique comparable with those on the intact plant. At very early developmental stages (3 d after anthesis), the li...

Activation tagging is a powerful tool to identify new mutants and to obtain information about possible biological functions of the overexpressed genes. The quadruple cauliflower mosaic virus (CaMV) 35S enhancer fragment is a strong enhancer, which is most commonly used for this purpose. However, the constitutive nature of this enhancer may generate lethal mutations or aberrations in different p...

Harvest index (HI), the ratio of seed mass to total biomass of the aboveground plant parts, is an important trait for harvestable yield of crops. Unfortunately, HI of Brassica napus is lower than that of other economically important crops. To identify candidate genes associated with high HI, a genome-wide association study of HI and four HI-related traits was conducted with 520 B. napus accessi...

In this study, the physiological functions of fungal mannitol metabolism in the pathogenicity and protection against environmental stresses were investigated in the necrotrophic fungus Alternaria brassicicola. Mannitol metabolism was examined during infection of Brassica oleracea leaves by sequential HPLC quantification of the major soluble carbohydrates and expression analysis of genes encodin...

U2AF (U2 small nuclear ribonucleoprotein auxiliary factor) is an essential splicing factor with critical roles in recognition of the 3'-splice site. In animals, the U2AF small subunit (U2AF35) can bind to the 3'-AG intron border and promote U2 small nuclear RNP binding to the branch-point sequences of introns through interaction with the U2AF large subunit. Two copies of U2AF35-encoding genes w...

Cytokinin oxidase/dehydrogenases (CKXs) play a critical role in the irreversible degradation of cytokinins, thereby regulating plant growth and development. Brassica napus is one of the most widely cultivated oilseed crops worldwide. With the completion of whole-genome sequencing of B. napus, genome-wide identification and expression analysis of the BnCKX gene family has become technically feas...