The reporter learned from the China Rice Research Institute on the 9th that the team of researcher Zhang Jian of the Institute and the team of academician Hu Peisong, through cooperation, revealed the mechanism of "plant insulin" 6-phosphate trehalose (tre6p) regulating rice carbon source distribution and grain yield for the first time, providing a new idea for the genetic improvement of high yield of crops. Relevant research results were recently published in the journal Molecular Plant. In the case of hyperglycemia, vertebrates mainly secrete insulin to stimulate blood glucose consumption and glycogen synthesis to maintain blood glucose homeostasis and ensure the normal operation of physiological functions. In recent years, tre6p in plants has been found to have insulin like functions. Tre6p can also regulate sugar level by promoting source sink transport. As the core hormone to maintain glucose homeostasis, tre6p is widely involved in regulating physiological processes such as plant growth and development and stress response. However, how tre6p maintains sugar homeostasis, interacts with other energy regulatory factors to coordinate the source sink distribution of carbon source, and how to use tre6p related genes to improve crop yield remains to be clarified. "Especially important, tre6p has great potential to improve crop yield." Zhang Jian introduced that studies have shown that heterologous expression of rice tre6p phosphatase gene ostpp1 in maize can increase the yield by 9% - 49%; The yield of wheat can also be increased by 20% before TREP spraying. The team identified osnac23, a sugar induced transcription factor gene that regulates tre6p accumulation in rice. Osnac23 can directly bind to the promoter region of the tre6p phosphatase gene ostpp1, inhibit the transcription of ostpp1 and promote the accumulation of tre6p. Previous studies have shown that tre6p can directly bind to plant energy hunger receptor SnRK1 and inhibit its enzyme activity. The study further showed that osnac23-tre6p-snrk1a formed a positive regulatory circuit to maintain rice carbon source distribution and grain yield. The research team overexpressed osnac23 gene during the experiment of three rice varieties, Japan Qing, Nanjing 46 and Zhongshui 01, which significantly increased the content of tre6p in plants. The results showed that the yield of transgenic plants with "green stalk weight" and "green ear weight" increased by 16.7% compared with that of wild plants in the later stage of field, which showed that the yield of transgenic plants with "green stalk weight" was significantly increased by 16.7%. (Xinhua News Agency)