Abstract
Iron deficiency is the most common human nutritional disorder in the world today, affecting approximately 2 billon people worldwide, almost a third of the world's population. For most of the world's population, plant foods serve as the major source of dietary iron. One approach that may contribute towards the solution of iron deficiency is the development of crop plants that contain higher levels of bioavailable iron. This project focuses on FRO6, a ferric chelate reductase in Arabidopsis thaliana that is thought to reduce apoplastic iron for transport across the plasma membrane in leaf cells. We hypothesize therefore that FRO6 controls iron content of leaves and provides iron needed for photosynthesis, a vital process in plants. In order to examine the proposed function of FRO6, we obtained two FRO6 loss-of-function lines, fro6-1 and fro6-2 and compared these lines to the WT to determine the role of FRO6 in iron homeostasis in plants. fro6-1 contains an insertion in the 8th intron of the gene, while fro6-2 contains an insertion in the 8th exon of the gene. We demonstrate that fro6-1 and fro6-2 are both homozygous for the insertion. Despite this, fro6-1 and fro6-2 mutants express FRO6 transcript, possibly because the insertion does not destabilize the transcript. Leaf disks prepared from fro6-1 and fro6-2 show a significant decrease in ferric reductase activity compared to WT leaf disks, indicating a putative role for FRO6 in reduction of apoplastic Fe in leaves. Consistent with the fact that FRO6 is not expressed in roots, fro6-1 mutant roots did not show a significant decrease in ferric reductase activity compared to the roots of WT plants. The fro6-1 plants show a reduced flowering time as compared to WT plants. Taken together, these data indicate that FRO6 is likely responsible for mediating the reduction of ferric iron to ferrous iron at the plasma membrane of leaf cells.
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Claims 6
Claim · model-written summary
The fro6-1 and fro6-2 lines are both homozygous for the T-DNA insertion.
- Taxon
- Arabidopsis Thaliana
Arabidopsis thalianat0 - Material
- fro6-1 and fro6-2e0
- Outcome
- homozygous for the insertione0
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
t0“Arabidopsis Thaliana”
e0“We demonstrate that fro6-1 and fro6-2 are both homozygous for the insertion”
Claim · model-written summary
The fro6-1 and fro6-2 mutants still express FRO6 transcript.
- Taxon
- Arabidopsis ThalianaArabidopsis thalianat0
- Material
- fro6-1 and fro6-2e0
- Gene
- FRO6e0
- Outcome
- FRO6 transcripte0
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
t0“Arabidopsis Thaliana”
e0“fro6-1 and fro6-2 mutants express FRO6 transcript”
Claim · model-written summary
Leaf disks from fro6-1 and fro6-2 showed significantly decreased ferric reductase activity compared with WT leaf disks.
- Taxon
- Arabidopsis ThalianaArabidopsis thalianat0
- Material
- fro6-1 and fro6-2e0
- Organ / stage
- Leaf diskse0
- Outcome
- ferric reductase activitye0
- Direction
- decreasee0
- Comparator
- WT leaf diskse0
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
t0“Arabidopsis Thaliana”
e0“Leaf disks prepared from fro6-1 and fro6-2 show a significant decrease in ferric reductase activity compared to WT leaf disks”
Claim · model-written summary
Roots of fro6-1 mutants did not show a significant decrease in ferric reductase activity compared with WT roots.
- Taxon
- Arabidopsis ThalianaArabidopsis thalianat0
- Material
- fro6-1e0
- Organ / stage
- rootse0
- Outcome
- ferric reductase activitye0
- Direction
- did not show a significant decreasee0
- Comparator
- the roots of WT plantse0
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
t0“Arabidopsis Thaliana”
e0“fro6-1 mutant roots did not show a significant decrease in ferric reductase activity compared to the roots of WT plants”
Claim · model-written summary
The fro6-1 plants showed a reduced flowering time compared with WT plants.
- Taxon
- Arabidopsis ThalianaArabidopsis thalianat0
- Material
- fro6-1e0
- Outcome
- flowering timee0
- Direction
- reducede0
- Comparator
- WT plantse0
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
t0“Arabidopsis Thaliana”
e0“The fro6-1 plants show a reduced flowering time as compared to WT plants”
Claim · model-written summary
The authors conclude FRO6 is likely responsible for reducing ferric iron to ferrous iron at the plasma membrane of leaf cells.
- Taxon
- Arabidopsis ThalianaArabidopsis thalianat0
- Organ / stage
- leaf cellse0
- Gene
- FRO6e0
- Outcome
- reduction of ferric iron to ferrous irone0
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
t0“Arabidopsis Thaliana”
e0“FRO6 is likely responsible for mediating the reduction of ferric iron to ferrous iron at the plasma membrane of leaf cells”