MANIPULATION OF STARCH GRANULE SIZE AND NUMBER (II)

摘要

The present invention relates to a method for producing plants with altered number and/or size of starch granules or granules of a more uniform size, the method comprising introducing into a plant a nucleotide sequence comprising a ycfl6 gene or a fragment thereof. Preferably the nucleic acid sequence of the ycfl6 gene comprises: the isolated nucleotide sequence of SEQ. ID. No.5 or SEQ ID No. 48; an isolated nucleotide sequence that is more than 89%, 49%, 26%, 95%, 89%, 94%, 95%, 40% identical to SEQ. ID. Nos. 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13 or 48 respectively, or more than 56%, 74%, 88%, 88%, 49%, 34%, 76%, 76%, 51% identical to SEQ. ID. Nos. 15, 17, 19, 21, 23 or 25, 27, 29, 31 respectively, or a fragment or variant thereof, as determined using the CLUSTALW program; an isolated nucleotide sequence encoding a polypeptide comprising an amino acid sequence that is more than 91%, 71%, 88%, 99.5%, 95%, 96%, 98% identical to SEQ. ID. Nos. 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12 or 14 respectively, or more than 33%, 86%, 64%, 99%, 89% and 34% identical to SEQ. ID. Nos. 16, 18, 20, 22, 24 or 26 respectively, or a fragment or variant thereof, as determined using the ALIGN program; or a nucleotide sequence which hybridises under stringent conditions to a sequence of (i), (ii) or (iii), or its complement. The present invention also provides a method for producing plants with altered number and/or size of plastids i.e. chloroplasts and amyloplasts, the method comprising introducing into a plant a nucleotide sequence comprising a ycfl6 gene, or a fragment thereof.