Isolation and characterization of OsMY1, a putative partner of OsRac5 from Oryza sativa L.

OsRac5 belongs to the rice Rho of plants family, and acts as the molecular switch in the signal pathway which is pivotally involved in the rice fertility control. One of its putative partners, OsMY1, was isolated by yeast two-hybrid screening from rice panicle cDNA library. Bioinformatics analysis shows that OsMY1 contains a coiled-coil domain which generally appeared in the partners of Rho GTPases. By yeast two-hybrid assay, it is confirmed that OsMY1 binds both the wild type (WT) and constitutively active (CA) OsRac5, but does not interact with dominantly negative OsRac5. In addition, the interactions between OsMY1 and WT-OsRac5 or CA-OsRac5 in vivo are demonstrated by bimolecular fluorescence complementation assay. Using PCR-mediated sequence deletion and point mutation of OsMY1, the interaction between OsMY1 and OsRac5 was identified to be mediated by the coiled-coil domain in OsMY1, and their binding was quantified by O-nitro-phenyl-β-D-galactopyranoside assay. Real-time PCR shows that OsMY1 and OsRac5 are coordinately expressed in rice leaves and panicles with similar expression patterns. Our results suggest that OsMY1 is an important target of OsRac5 and that these two genes are involved in the same biological processes in rice growth and development.