Dibyendu Talukdar

Department of Botany, R.P.M. College (University of Calcutta), Uttarpara, Hooghly 712258, West Bengal, India
Author    Correspondence author
Plant Gene and Trait, 2014, Vol. 5, No. 5   doi: 10.5376/pgt.2014.05.0005
Received: 17 Mar., 2014    Accepted: 25 Mar., 2014    Published: 28 Mar., 2014

This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Talukdar, 2014, Differential Response of Cysteine-deficient Lentil (Lens culinaris Medik.) Mutants Impaired in Foliar O-acetylserine(thiol)-lyase Expression, Plant Gene and Trait, Vol.5, No.5 33-39 (doi: 10.5376/pgt.2014.05.0005)

Lentil is a cool-season pulse crop, rich in protein but deficient in two sulphur-containing amino acids cysteine and methionine. Due to low genetic variability in existing germplasm, induced mutagenic technique has been adopted in lentil, and two mutant lines exhibiting poor growth and low dry weight were isolated in M₂-mutagenized (0.10% and 0.15% EMS, 6 h) population of variety L 414. Further analysis revealed that plants from both mutant lines were highly deficient in seed cysteine (Cys) content, and thus, were tentatively designated as cysLc1 and cysLc2 mutants. Mutant plants were advanced to M₃ generation. Biochemical analysis through cysteine synthesizing pathway in leaves revealed that activity of serine acetyl transferase (SAT) was normal in both the mutant progenies but both were highly deficient in foliar O-acetylserine(thiol)-lyase (OAS-TL) activity. Transcriptomic analysis by qRT-PCR confirmed normal expression of SAT in both mutants but revealed differential expressions of two OAS-TL isoforms; OAS-TL 1 isoform was not detectable in cysLc1 mutant while expression of OAS-TL 2 isoform was totally repressed in leaves of cysLc2 mutant. Genetic studies and test of allelism pointed out that both the mutants were recessive and were complementing with each other to produce normal in F₁ and normal along with mutant plants in F₂ progeny. The progeny plants exhibiting normal phenotype showed normal mRNA transcripts of both OAS-TL isoforms. Being stable and self-fertile, the mutants will give vital clues in genetic basis of thiol-metabolic network of lentil crops.

EMS-Mutagenesis; Gene expression analysis; Glutathione; Lentil; OAS-TL isoforms