Chinese Bulletin of Botany ›› 2009, Vol. 44 ›› Issue (01): 52-58.

• 研究论文 • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Isolation and Positional Cloning of Methyl-Indole-3-Acetic Acid Resistant Mutants in Arabidopsis

Xianhui Hou1;, Maoyu Ding1;, Sainan Liu, Linchuan Li, Lijia Qu*   

  1. National Laboratory for Protein Engineering and Plant Genetic Engineering, Peking-Yale Joint Research Center for Plant Molecular Genetics and AgroBiotechnology, College of Life Sciences, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China
  • Received:2008-06-22 Revised:2008-06-26 Online:2009-01-01 Published:2009-01-01
  • Contact: Lijia Qu

Abstract: Auxin is one of the most important plant hormones in that it regulates almost all aspects of plant growth and development. In plants, free indole-3-acetic acid (IAA) is the major active auxin and can be converted to methyl-IAA (MeIAA) with the activity of an IAA carboxyl methyltransferase 1 (IAMT1). However, MeIAA is also an inactive form of IAA and can be converted to IAA catalyzed by several esterases. MeIAA is a non-polar IAA form and can diffuse between cells, so MeIAA is suitable for screening new components in MeIAA metabolism or IAA biology. Here, we screened ethyl-methane-sulphonate (EMS)-mutagensis seedlings on MeIAA medium in the dark, with longer hypocotyls used as a criterion. We isolated 8 putative MeIAA-resistant mutants and carried out further experiments on one mutant, mir1. These new mutants will help shed light on MeIAA metabolism and the action mechanism of IAA.