Abstract
In order to elucidate the function of cryptochromes in rice, we had isolated all rice CRY genes (OsCRY1a, OsCRY1b and OsCRY2) and have analyzed their expression patterns at transcription level.
According to Shalitin (2002), blue-light dependent phosphorylation of AtCRY2 triggers photomorphogenic responses and eventually causes degradation of AtCRY2. We examined whether OsCRY2 underwent light-induced phosphorylation in vivo. OsCRY2 proteins were labeled by Phosphorus-32 in vivo and immunoprecipitated from the crude extract by using anti-OsCRY2 antibody. OsCRY2 was found to be phosphorylated under white-light. OsCRY2 protein and radioactively labbelled immunoprecipitation product were found at higher levels in transgenic rice overexpressing OsCRY2 than in WT. We also investigated the phosphorylation of OsCRY2 under blue- or red-light because rice CRY2 protein was degraded under red-light as well as blue-light.
We transformed rice with OsCRY2-overexpression vector or -antisense vector to analyze the roles of cry2 on the flowering time determination in rice.
