The A to B of starch granule formation in wheat endosperm

Abstract

Starch is both an important plant metabolite and a feedstock in many industrial processes. Most plants accumulate granules with a unimodal size distribution; however some tissues, such as wheat endosperm, demonstrate a bimodal distribution containing a mixture of large A-granules and small B-granules. A quantitative trait locus (QTL) in wheat has been identified that greatly influences B-granule formation, and Chia et al. (2019) isolated a single gene (B-GRANULE CONTENT 1, BGC1) from within that QTL responsible for the phenotype. It is similar in sequence to other genes that have recently been shown to be involved in starch metabolism.