Screening of membrane transporter genes that correlated with color development of anthocyanins.

Abstract

Plant vacuole accumulates many solutes such as nutrients, proteins, second metabolites and ions. Uptakes of solutes from cytosol are maintained by solute-specific membrane transporters. However, most of membrane transporters have not been identified yet.
We attended to anthocyanin pigments, which are major second metabolites of plant. Interestingly, color developments of anthocyanins, red to blue, are depending not only on its structures but also on environmental status of vacuolar space. Vacuolar pH, metal-ions concentration, anthocyanin-binding small molecules and proteins influence colors of anthocyanins. On the contrary, anthocyanins are natural indicators of vacuolar solutes.
In this study, we prepared over-expression library of membrane transporter genes of Arabidopsis thaliana in order to screen genes that affect colors of anthocyanins. We transformed a mutant line of Arabidopsis thaliana that accumulates anthocyanin-pigments by Agrobacterium method using the library.