Novel small molecule modulators of plant growth and development identified by high-content screening with plant pollen.

Abstract

Background Small synthetic molecules provide valuable tools to agricultural biotechnology to circumvent the need for genetic engineering and provide unique benefits to modulate plant growth and development. Results We developed a method to explore molecular mechanisms of plant growth by high-throughput phenotypic screening of haploid populations of pollen cells. These cells rapidly germinate to develop pollen tubes. Compounds acting as growth inhibitors or stimulators of pollen tube growth are identified in a screen lasting not longer than 8 h high-lighting the potential broad applicability of this assay to prioritize chemicals for future mechanism focused investigations in plants. We identified 65 chemical compounds that influenced pollen development. We demonstrated the usefulness of the identified compounds as promotors or inhibitors of tobacco and Arabidopsis thaliana seed growth. When 7 days old seedlings were grown in the presence of these chemicals twenty two of these compounds caused a reduction in Arabidopsis root length in the range from 4.76 to 49.20 % when compared to controls grown in the absence of the chemicals. Two of the chemicals sharing structural homology with thiazolidines stimulated root growth and increased root length by 129.23 and 119.09 %, respectively. The pollen tube growth stimulating compound (S-02) belongs to benzazepin-type chemicals and increased Arabidopsis root length by 126.24 %. Conclusions In this study we demonstrate the usefulness of plant pollen tube based assay for screening small chemical compound libraries for new biologically active compounds. The pollen tubes represent an ultra-rapid screening tool with which even large compound libraries can be analyzed in very short time intervals. The broadly applicable high-throughput protocol is suitable for automated phenotypic screening of germinating pollen resulting in combination with seed germination assays in identification of plant growth inhibitors and stimulators.

Plant phenotyping relevance

花粉管成長を指標とする高スループットの表現型スクリーニング法を開発・実証しており、植物の成長表現型の取得が研究の中心である。

Code and data availability

The paper describes a pollen-based high-content chemical screen with supplementary tables (compound library, hit lists, statistics), but no public phenotype dataset, image repository, analysis code, or model deposit is provided. The authors state only that supporting data are included as additional files within the pay

No evidence-backed public reproduction asset is currently recorded.