The effects of bud removal on soybean leaf gene expression.

The paraveinal mesophyll (PVM) of soybean leaves is a layer of laterally expanded cells sandwiched between the palisade and spongy mesophyll chlorenchyma. The vacuoles of PVM cells contain an abundance of a putative vegetative storage protein, VSP (, ). VSP is is constitutively produced, but is up-regulated during sink limitation experiments involving flower, fruit, or vegetative bud removal. Soybean vegetative lipoxygenases (Vlx), consisting of 5 isozymes (Vlx, A-D), have been identified as potential storage proteins because they accumulate to high levels with experimental sink limitation and have been co-localized with VSP to the vacuoles of PVM cells. We re-investigated the sub-cellular locations of these enzymes with TEM immuno-cytochemistry. We employed laser micro-dissection to compared RNA expression of PVM cells with mesophyll chlorenchyma cells, and we performed a micro-array analysis of soybean leaf samples representing a time-course, sink-limitation, experiment. We found that none of the Vlx isozymes co-localize with putative storage proteins in PVM vacuoles, and that our sink limitation experiment (typical of those used in the past) induced a strong up-regulation of stress response genes, simultaneous with the up-regulation of the Vlx isozymes. Our findings do not support a storage function for soybean Vlx.

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Turner GW, Cuthbertson DJ, Voo SS, Settles ML, Grimes HD, Lange BM