Recently, Dr. Li Pu’s research team from Biotechnology Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, revealed important roles for BELL TFs in regulating maize plant height and provide potential targets for genetic engineering to improve maize plant architecture and yield. The work, entitled “ZmBELL10 interacts with other ZmBELLs and recognizes specific motifs for transcriptional activation to modulate internode patterning in maize”, was published in  New Phytologist  on 15 August 2023.

Maize plant height, which is generally determined by node number and internode length, affects crop yield and high-density planting. Although many plant height-related genes have been cloned, the molecular genetic basis of maize plant height remains unclear. In this study, scientists identified a maize BELL TF, ZmBELL10, that held vital roles in regulating internode length and other important agronomic traits in maize. ZmBELL10 directly recognized specific motifs in the promoters of its target genes and acted as a transcriptional activator to activate the expression of cell division- and cell elongation-related genes. They demonstrated that ZmBELL10 and six other ZmBELLs interacted to form protein complexes through their α-helical structure mediated by two key Phe residues in the conserved POX domain, and these BELL proteins directly recognized the same motifs to enhance the expression of their downstream genes. These findings reveal a previously undescribed function of the TF complexes involving ZmBELL10 in the positive regulation of maize plant height and provide potential targets for maize genetic engineering.

Dr. Jia Yu, Dr. Guangshu Song (Professor, Maize Research Institute of Jilin Academy of Agricultural Sciences), Ph.D student Weijun Guo, and Dr. Liang Le (associate professor) contributed equally to this work. This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2021YFF1000301), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (32172091), Fundamental Research Funds for Central Non-Profit of Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS-ZDRW202109), the Agricultural Science and Technology Innovation Program of CAAS (ZDRW202004), the 2020 Research Program of Sanya Yazhou Bay Science and Technology City (SKJC-2020-02-005), and the Nanfan special project of Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (YBXM15).

More details can be found at the link: https://doi.org/10.1111/nph.19192

Figure. Molecular basis of the ZmBELL10 complexes in regulating internode elongation and plant height in maize.

By Pu Li     

(puli@caas.cn)