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Plant and Cell Physiology Advance Access published online on September 14, 2009
Plant and Cell Physiology, doi:10.1093/pcp/pcp127
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© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Japanese Society of Plant Physiologists. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Arrested differentiation of proplastids into chloroplasts in variegated leaves characterized by plastid ultrastructure and nucleoid morphology

Wataru Sakamoto1,*, Yasuyuki Uno1,**, Quan Zhang2, Eiko Miura1, Yusuke Kato1 and Sodmergen2

1Research Institute for Bioresources, Okayama University, Kurashiki, Okayama 710-0046, Japan
2Key Laboratory of Cell Proliferation and Differentiation (Ministry of Education), College of Life Sciences, Peking University, Beijing 100871, PR China

*Corresponding author: Email, saka{at}rib.okayama-u.ac.jp; Fax, +81-86-434-1206.


  Abstract

Leaf variegation is seen in many ornamental plants and is often caused by a cell lineage-type formation of white sectors lacking functional chloroplasts. A mutant showing such leaf variegation is viable and is therefore suitable for studying chloroplast development. In this study, the formation of white sectors was temporally investigated in the Arabidopsis leaf-variegated mutant var2. Green sectors were found to emerge from white sectors after the formation of the first true leaf. Transmission electron microscopic examination of plastid ultrastructures confirmed that the peripheral zone in the var2 shoot meristem contained proplastids but lacked developing chloroplasts that were normally detected in wild type. These data suggest that chloroplast development proceeds very slowly in var2 variegated leaves. A notable feature in var2 is that the plastids in white sectors contain remarkable globular vacuolated membranes and prolamellar body-like structures. Although defective plastids were hardly observed in shoot meristems, they began to accumulate during early leaf development. Consistent with these observations, large plastid nucleoids detected in white sectors by DNA-specific fluorescent dyes were characteristic to those found in proplastids and were clearly distinguished from those in chloroplasts. These results strongly imply that in white sectors, differentiation of plastids into chloroplasts is arrested at the early stage of thylakoid development. Interestingly, large plastid nucleoids were detected in variegated sectors from species other than Arabidopsis. Thus, plastids in variegated leaves appear to share a common feature and represent a novel plastid type

Keywords: Chloroplast development - Plastid nucleoid - Thylakoid membrane - Leaf variegation - Electron microscopy - Arabidopsis thaliana

**Present address: Nanto Seeds Co., Kashihara, Nara 634-0077, Japan.

(Received July 17, 2009; Accepted September 8, 2009)
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