Molecular characteristics of OsAP79
It has been shown that OsAP79 plays a positive role in rice BPH resistance. Thus, we explored the potential roles of its molecular characteristics. To test whether OsAP79 was responsive to BPH infestation, we quantified its expression at different time points after BPH treatment. The expression of OsAP79 was induced and continuously increased when NIP was treated with BPH during a period of 96 h, and it was significantly high at the time points of 72 h and 96 h (Figure 3a).
We then checked its expression in different organs of NIP using qRT-PCR. The results showed that OsAP79 was expressed in all organs at the seedling and adult stages. However, the expression level was significantly higher in the roots than in the other organs, especially at the adult stage (Figure 3b).
To further dissect the expression pattern of OsAP79 at the subcellular level, we expressed OsAP79-GFP in rice protoplasts. We speculated that OsAP79 was expressed in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) (Figure S6), and then co-expressed the fusion protein with an endoplasmic reticulum-red fluorescent protein (ER-RFP) marker in rice protoplasts. As a result, the fluorescence signals of the two fusion proteins are highly overlapped (Figure 3c), suggesting that OsAP79 was predominantly localized in the ER.