RNA demethylation increases the yield and biomass of rice and potato plants in field trials
Abstract
RNA N6-methyladenosine (m6A) modifications are essential in plants. Here, we show that transgenic expression of the human RNA demethylase FTO in rice caused a more than threefold increase in grain yield under greenhouse conditions. In field trials, transgenic expression of FTO in rice and potato caused ~50% increases in yield and biomass. We demonstrate that the presence of FTO stimulates root meristem cell proliferation and tiller bud formation and promotes photosynthetic efficiency and drought tolerance but has no effect on mature cell size, shoot meristem cell proliferation, root diameter, plant height or ploidy. FTO mediates substantial m6A demethylation (around 7% of demethylation in poly(A) RNA and around 35% decrease of m6A in non-ribosomal nuclear RNA) in plant RNA, inducing chromatin openness and transcriptional activation. Therefore, modulation of plant RNA m6A methylation is a promising strategy to dramatically improve plant growth and crop yield.
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Data availability
m6A-seq and quantitative RNA-seq data generated by this study were deposited in the GEO database under the accession number GSE135549. Source data are provided with this paper.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Y. Wang for paraffin embedding station support, C. Xu for microtome support and X. Meng and J. Wang for assistance during field work. This work was supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (2019YFA0802201 and 2017YFA0505201 to G.J.), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (21822702, 21820102008, 92053109 and 21432002 to G.J.), the Beijing Natural Science Foundation (Z200010 to G.J.), EpiPlanta Biotech Ltd. (to G.J.), the Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Genomics at Peking University (to G.J.) and the Zhong Ziyi Education Foundation (to C.H.). C.H. is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator.
Author information
Author notes
These authors contributed equally: Qiong Yu, Shun Liu.
Affiliations
Synthetic and Functional Biomolecules Center, Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences, Key Laboratory of Bioorganic Chemistry and Molecular Engineering of Ministry of Education, College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering, Peking University, Beijing, China
Qiong Yu, Yu Xiao, Shasha Zhang, Xueping Wang, Yingying Xu, Junbo Yang, Jun Tang, Hong-Chao Duan, Lian-Huan Wei, Qian Tang, Chunling Wang, Wutong Zhang, Ye Wang, Peizhe Song, Qiang Lu, Wei Zhang, Shunqing Dong & Guifang Jia
Department of Chemistry and Institute for Biophysical Dynamics, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA
Shun Liu, Jiangbo Wei & Chuan He
Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Chicago, IL, USA
Shun Liu, Jiangbo Wei & Chuan He
State Key Laboratory Breeding Base of Green Pesticide and Agricultural Bioengineering/Key Laboratory of Green Pesticide and Agricultural Bioengineering, Ministry of Education, Guizhou University, Guiyang, China
Lu Yu & Baoan Song
State Key Laboratory of Plant Genomics, Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, The Innovative Academy of Seed Design, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
Hong Yu
School of Life Sciences, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang, China
Yulong Li
College of Life Sciences, Tianjin Normal University, Tianjin, China
Haiyan Zhang
Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA
Chuan He
National Engineering Research Center of Pesticide, Nankai University, Tianjin, China
Guifang Jia
Contributions
G.J. and C.H. conceived the original idea and designed original studies. Q.Y. performed most experiments with help from Y.L., Y. Xiao., S.Z., X.W., Y. Xu, Y.L., J.Y., J.T., H.-C.D., L.-H.W., Q.T., C.W., Wutong Zhang, Y.W., P.S., Q.L., Wei Zhang, S.D., H.Y., H.Z. and B.S. S.L. performed most computational analysis with help from J.W. G.J. and C.H. wrote the manuscript with input from Q.Y. and S.L.
Corresponding authors
Correspondence to Baoan Song or Chuan He or Guifang Jia.
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
A patent application has been filed by EpiPlanta Biotech Ltd. for the technology disclosed in this publication. C.H. is a scientific founder and a member of the scientific advisory board of Accent Therapeutics.
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Peer review information Nature Biotechnology thanks Brian Gregory and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.
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Cite this article
Yu, Q., Liu, S., Yu, L. et al. RNA demethylation increases the yield and biomass of rice and potato plants in field trials. Nat Biotechnol (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41587-021-00982-9
Received: 10 September 2019
Accepted: 11 June 2021
Published: 22 July 2021
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