| Summary: | Cytoplasmic male sterility (CMS) in pepper (Capsicum annuum L.) has been associated with novel genes in the mitochondria, such as orf507 and Ψatp6-2. Plant sterility has been proved to result from the rearrangement of the mitochondrial genome. Previous studies have demonstrated that orf507 is co-transcribed with the cox II gene, and Ψatp6-2 is truncated at the 3' region of the atp6-2 that is found in the maintainer line. Until this time, little has been known about the relationship between the novel gene and the function of its corresponding enzyme in mitochondria from the CMS pepper line. Moreover, the aberrant function of the mitochondrial enzymes is seldom reported in pepper. In this study, we observed that anther abortion occurred after the tetrad stage in the CMS line (HW203A), which was accompanied by premature programmed cell death (PCD) in the tapetum. The spatiotemporal expression patterns of orf507 and Ψatp6-2 were analyzed together with the corresponding enzyme activities to investigate the interactions of the genes and mitochondrial enzymes. The two genes were both highly expressed in the anther. The orf507 was down-regulated in HW203A (CMS line), with nearly no expression in HW203B (the maintainer line). In contrast, the cytochrome c oxidase activity in HW203A showed the opposite trend, reaching its highest peak at the tetrad stage when compared with HW203B at the same stage. The Ψatp6-2 in the CMS line was also down-regulated, but it was up-regulated in the maintainer line. The corresponding F1Fo-ATPase activity in the CMS line was gradually decreased along with the development of the anther, which showed the same trend for Ψatp6-2 gene expression. On the contrary, with up-regulated gene expression of atp6-2 in the maintainer line, the F1Fo-ATPase activity sharply decreased after the initial development stage, but gradually increased following the tetrad stage, which was contrary to what happened in the CMS line. Taken together, all these results may provide evidence for the involvement of aberrant mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase and F1Fo-ATPase in CMS pepper anther abortion. Moreover, the novel orf507 and Ψatp6-2 genes in the mitochondria may be involved in the dysfunction of the cytochrome c oxidase and F1Fo-ATPase, respectively, which are responsible for the abortion of anthers in the CMS line.
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