Background: The plant chloroplast is essential for photosynthesis and other cellular processes, but an understanding of the biological mechanisms of plant chloroplast development are incomplete.
Results: A new temperature-sensitive white stripe leaf 9(wsl9) rice mutant is described. The mutant develops white stripes during early leaf development, but becomes green after the three-leaf stage under field conditions. The wsl9 mutant was albinic when grown at low temperature. Gene mapping of the WSL9 locus, together with complementation tests indicated that WSL9 encodes a novel protein with an HNH domain. WSL9 was expressed in various tissues. Under low temperature, the wsl9 mutation caused defects in splicing of rpl2, but increased the editing efficiency of rpoB. Expression levels of plastid genome-encoded genes, which are transcribed by plastid-coded RNA polymerase (PEP), chloroplast development genes and photosynthesis-related genes were altered in the wsl9 mutant.
Conclusion: WSL9 encodes an HNH endonuclease domain-containing protein that is essential for early chloroplast development. Our study provides opportunities for further research on regulatory mechanisms of chloroplast development in rice.
Keywords: Chloroplasts; Oryza sativa; RNA splicing.