Roles of autophagy during male reproductive development in rice

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Autophagy, one of the major catabolic pathways in eukaryotic cells, plays roles in recycling of proteins and metabolites by delivering cytoplasmic components and organelles to the degradation compartments such as lysosomes and the vacuole. In many eukaryotes, autophagy has also been shown to be essential for growth and development. However, direct involvement of autophagy during plant developmental process had not yet been addressed. We here isolated a rice retrotransposon-insertional mutant defective in an autophagy-related gene. We also established an in vivo imaging system of the dynamics of autophagy in rice, and found that autophagy is impaired in the mutant. Morphological and molecular genetic analyses suggest that autophagy plays critical roles during anther development in rice.