Journal
JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL BOTANY
Volume 65, Issue 13, Pages 3371-3380Publisher
OXFORD UNIV PRESS
DOI: 10.1093/jxb/eru108
Keywords
Bundle sheath; C-4; cell wall; endodermis; grasses; mestome sheath; physiology; suberin
Categories
Funding
- NSF [IOS- 1127017]
- Direct For Biological Sciences
- Div Of Molecular and Cellular Bioscience [1127017] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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High-yielding, stress-tolerant grass crops are essential to meet future food and energy demands. Efforts are under-way to engineer improved varieties of the C-3 cereal crop rice by introducing NADP-malic enzyme C-4 photosynthesis using maize as a model system. However, several modifications to the rice leaf vasculature are potentially necessary, including the introduction of suberin lamellae into the bundle sheath cell walls. Suberized cell walls are ubiquitous in the root endodermis of all grasses, and developmental similarities are apparent between endodermis and bundle sheath cell walls. Nonetheless, there is considerable heterogeneity in sheath cell development and suberin composition both within and between grass taxa. The effect of this variation on physiological function remains ambiguous over forty years after suberin lamellae were initially proposed to regulate solute and photoassimilate fluxes and C-4 gas exchange. Interspecies variation has confounded efforts to ascribe physiological differences specifically to the presence or absence of suberin lamellae. Thus, specific perturbation of suberization within a uniform genetic background is needed, but, until recently, the genetic resources to manipulate suberin composition in the grasses were largely unavailable. The recent dissection of the suberin biosynthesis pathway in model dicots and the identification of several promising candidate genes in model grasses will facilitate the characterization of the first suberin biosynthesis genes in a monocot. Much remains to be learned about the role of bundle sheath suberization in leaf physiology, but the stage is set for significant advances in the near future.
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