Overexpression of rice F-box protein OsFBX322 confers increased sensitivity to gamma irradiation in Arabidopsis.

Ionizing radiation has a substantial effect on physiological and biochemical processes in plants via induction of transcriptional changes and diverse genetic alterations. Previous microarray analysis showed that rice OsFBX322, which encodes a rice F-box protein, was downregulated in response to three types of ionizing radiation: gamma irradiation, ion beams, and cosmic rays. In order to characterize the radiation-responsive genes in rice, OsFBX322 was selected for further analysis. OsFBX322 expression patterns in response to radiation were confirmed using quantitative RT-PCR. Transient expression of a GFP-OsFBX322 fusion protein in tobacco leaf epidermis indicated that OsFBX322 is localized to the nucleus. To determine the effect of OsFBX322 expression on radiation response, OsFBX322 was overexpressed in Arabidopsis. Transgenic overexpression lines were more sensitive to gamma irradiation than control plants. These results suggest that OsFBX322 plays a negative role in the defense response to radiation in plants. In addition, we obtained four co-expression genes of OsFBX322 by specific co-expression networks using the ARANCE. Quantitative RT-PCR showed that the four genes were also downregulated after exposure to the three types of radiation. These results imply that the co-expressed genes may serve as key regulators in the radiation response pathway in plants.