Screening Of Mutants Defective In Reproductive Development And Expression Pattern Analysis Of MPKs And MKKs In Arabidopsis Thaliana

SERKs belong to a subfamily of leucine-rich repeat receptor-like kinases, playing important roles in regulating reproductive growth and development in Arabidopsis. To identify new components involved in SERKs-mediated reproductive growth and developmental processes, an antisense cDNA library of ovule was expressed in serk2 serk3 double mutants driven by SERK1 promoter. A total of 17 mutants defective in reproductive growth and development were obtained and named as cos mutants. The phenotypes of ovules, pollen and embryos from these mutants were analyzed. Among them, there are 9 mutants with abnormal embryo sac development, 2 mutants with abnormal male gametophyte development, 1 mutant with abnormal embryo development.MAPK signaling cascade is also critical to reproductive growth and development in Arabidopsis. To investigate which MAPK member is involved in SERKs-mediated reproductive growth and developmental processes, the promoters of MPKs and MKKs were cloned to drive the expression of the reporter gene GUS in Arabidopsis. The expression patterns of these MPKs and MKKs in ovules, pollen and embryos were analyzed by GUS staining. Analysis results show that there are 4 genes expressed in mature ovules, 14 genes expressed in the mature pollen, 7 genes expressed in some period of developing embryos.