Dr. Su-May Yu, a Distinguished Research Fellow in the Institute of Molecular Biology, Academia Sinica, and her research team published a breakthrough paper, October 6, in the high-impact journal Science Signaling. The paper details the discovery of genes and mechanisms that enable rice to germinate and grow under water, which not only sheds light on the mystery of rice flood tolerance known for thousands years but also facilitates breeding of rice and other crops for enhanced flood tolerance.  

    This paper has been selected as the cover article in the current issue of the journal. The first author of this paper was Kuo-Wei Lee, a Ph.D. graduate student from the Graduate Institute of Life Sciences at the National Defense Medical Center; Mr. Lee was supervised by Dr. Yu throughout the project. 

    Although plants need water to survive, too much of a good thing can be devastating: submergence in water limits the diffusion of oxygen and thereby restricts aerobic metabolism and energy production. Thus, flooding is disastrous to plants and can potentially wipe out crops. Rice is unusually tolerant to flooding. Dr. Yu’s team investigated the mechanisms that allow rice seedlings to survive flooding. They discovered that CIPK15, a protein kinase (a type of enzyme) integrates the response to oxygen deficiency with that to sugar depletion to regulate anaerobic carbohydrate metabolism under flooded conditions. This mechanism allows rice seedlings to survive and continue to grow even when submerged in water. These unique features allow rice to grow in irrigated-paddies for weed control in nearly 80% of world rice production areas.

    Typhoons and flooding have frequently caused tremendous crop loss. Dr. Yu’s discovery will help breeders to generate new rice varieties with greater seedling growth under flood-water, which will save on labor and the use of pesticides potentially benefiting the environment. Similar approaches might be applied to improve flooding tolerance in other crops. 

    The whole article entitled “Coordinated Responses to Oxygen and Sugar Deficiency Allow Rice Seedlings to Tolerate Flooding” can be found in Issue 91 of Science Signaling Journal at http://stke.sciencemag.org/ 

    The complete list of authors is: Kuo-Wei Lee, Peng-Wen Chen, Chung-An Lu, Shu Chen, Tuan-Hua David Ho, and Su-May Yu .