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CELL BIOLOGY AND SIGNAL TRANSDUCTION

An Arabidopsis Homolog of Yeast ATG6/VPS30 Is Essential for Pollen Germination^1,[W]

Department of Cell Biology, National Institute for Basic Biology, Okazaki 444–8585, Japan

Yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) Atg6/Vps30 is required for autophagy and the sorting of vacuolar hydrolases, such as carboxypeptidase Y. In higher eukaryotes, however, roles for ATG6/VPS30 homologs in vesicle sorting have remained obscure. Here, we show that AtATG6, an Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) homolog of yeast ATG6/VPS30, restored both autophagy and vacuolar sorting of carboxypeptidase Y in a yeast atg6/vps30 mutant. In Arabidopsis cells, green fluorescent protein-AtAtg6 protein localized to punctate structures and colocalized with AtAtg8, a marker protein of the preautophagosomal structure. Disruption of AtATG6 by T-DNA insertion resulted in male sterility that was confirmed by reciprocal crossing experiments. Microscopic analyses of AtATG6 heterozygous plants (AtATG6/atatg6) crossed with the quartet mutant revealed that AtATG6-deficient pollen developed normally, but did not germinate. Because other atatg mutants are fertile, AtAtg6 likely mediates pollen germination in a manner independent of autophagy. We propose that Arabidopsis Atg6/Vps30 functions not only in autophagy, but also plays a pivotal role in pollen germination.

The author responsible for distribution of materials integral to the findings presented in this article in accordance with the policy described in the Instructions for Authors (www.plantphysiol.org) is: Yoshinori Ohsumi (yohsumi{at}nibb).

^[W] The online version of this article contains Web-only data.

www.plantphysiol.org/cgi/doi/10.1104/pp.106.093864

^* Corresponding author; e-mail yohsumi{at}nibb.ac.jp; fax 81–564–55–7516.

Received November 29, 2006; accepted January 12, 2007; published January 26, 2007.

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