| dc.description.abstract | RNA helicases are motor proteins that catalyze the unwinding of duplex RNA/RNA in an ATP-dependent manner and thereby play important roles in most of the basic cellular processes, including ribosome biogenesis, mRNA splicing, RNA export, mRNA translation, and RNA decay. Rice (Oryza sativa) genome contains at least 62 different genes for DEAD-box RNA helicase proteins. This study investigated two DEAD box RNA helicase, OsRH2 and OsRH34, in rice. Amino acid sequence analysis indicated that the OsRH2 and OsRH34 shared 99% identity and 100% similarity. From the BiFC results, OsRH2 exhibited physical interaction with OsMAGOa and OsY14a, indicated that OsRH2 is core components of the EJC in rice. The OsRH2 were constitutively expression and activated by cold stress. RNA interference transgenic plants were generated for studying biological roles of OsRH2 and OsRH34 in rice. The phenotypes of three independent OsRH2 RNAi transgenic lines, OsRH2 RNAi -2b, -4 and -14b, indicated dwarf, short length of internode, reproduction stage delaying, embryonic development defect, abnormal pollen development, and low seed setting rate. These phenotypes resembled gibberellin-related developmental defects which were exhibited in several GA biosynthesis and GA signaling protein mutants. Besides, the OsRH2 RNAi transgenic lines exhibited unsplicing GA20ox2 mRNA accumulation. My study showed that OsRH2 and OsRH34 participate in mRNA splicing and are also involved in plant development in rice. | en_US |