Dissemin is shutting down on January 1st, 2025

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Wiley, New Phytologist, 2(193), p. 432-444, 2011

DOI: 10.1111/j.1469-8137.2011.03929.x

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Rice DUR3 mediates high-affinity urea transport and plays an effective role in improvement of urea acquisition and utilization when expressed in Arabidopsis

This paper is available in a repository.
This paper is available in a repository.

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Abstract

• Despite the great agricultural and ecological importance of efficient use of urea-containing nitrogen fertilizers by crops, molecular and physiological identities of urea transport in higher plants have been investigated only in Arabidopsis. • We performed short-time urea-influx assays which have identified a low-affinity and high-affinity (K(m) of 7.55 μM) transport system for urea-uptake by rice roots (Oryza sativa). • A high-affinity urea transporter OsDUR3 from rice was functionally characterized here for the first time among crops. OsDUR3 encodes an integral membrane-protein with 721 amino acid residues and 15 predicted transmembrane domains. Heterologous expression demonstrated that OsDUR3 restored yeast dur3-mutant growth on urea and facilitated urea import with a K(m) of c. 10 μM in Xenopus oocytes. • Quantitative reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) analysis revealed upregulation of OsDUR3 in rice roots under nitrogen-deficiency and urea-resupply after nitrogen-starvation. Importantly, overexpression of OsDUR3 complemented the Arabidopsis atdur3-1 mutant, improving growth on low urea and increasing root urea-uptake markedly. Together with its plasma membrane localization detected by green fluorescent protein (GFP)-tagging and with findings that disruption of OsDUR3 by T-DNA reduces rice growth on urea and urea uptake, we suggest that OsDUR3 is an active urea transporter that plays a significant role in effective urea acquisition and utilisation in rice. ; Wei-Hong Wang, Barbara Köhler, Feng-Qiu Cao, Guo-Wei Liu, Yuan-Yong Gong, Song Sheng, Qi-Chao Song, Xiao-Yuan Cheng, Trevor Garnett, Mamoru Okamoto, Rui Qin, Bernd Mueller-Roeber, Mark Tester, and Lai-Hua Liu