Male reproductive development is vital for crop seed production. However, the mechanism underlying remains largely unknown. Here, we isolated a male sterile mutant osgelp34-1 in rice. Cytological analysis indicated that the mutant exhibited delayed degradation of anther wall layers and abnormal pollen development, which resulted in the production of shrunk and non-viable pollen grains. MutMap and CRISPR/Cas9 analysis confirmed that a point mutation in OsGELP34 is responsible for the male sterile phenotype. OsGELP34 is highly expressed in reproductive tissues and encodes a putative GDSL lipase. OsGELP34 protein is located to the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) and conserved in land plants. Collectively, our findings elaborated that OsGELP34 plays a vital role in rice male reproduction and has potential applications in rice hybrid breeding.

男性生殖发育对于农作物种子的生产至关重要。但是，基本的机制仍然未知。在这里，我们在水稻中分离出雄性不育突变体osgelp34-1。细胞学分析表明，该突变体表现出延迟的花药壁层降解和异常的花粉发育，从而导致花粉粒萎缩和失去活力。MutMap和CRISPR / Cas9分析证实，OsGELP34中的点突变是造成雄性不育表型的原因。OsGELP34在生殖组织中高度表达，并编码一种假定的GDSL脂肪酶。OsGELP34蛋白位于内质网（ER），并在陆地植物中保存。总而言之，我们的发现详细说明了OsGELP34 在水稻雄性繁殖中起着至关重要的作用，并在水稻杂交育种中具有潜在的应用。