Abstract
Development of plant tissues is dependent on numerous factors, including hormone activity, signaling, cell division, and elongation. In plants, Defective Entry into Mitosis 1 (Dim1) homologs are recognized as pivotal in leaf senescence and progress of normal growth, but their role in rice has not been functionally characterized. The findings presented in this paper suggest that OsDim1 is important in early seedling development, pollen tube elongation, and impacts rice yield components. The gene is expressed in the scutellum, endosperm, embryonic root, shoot, pollen grains and tubes, as well as in several organs of the rice flower. According to the present study findings, RNAi mediated knockdown of OsDim1 resulted in phytohormonal imbalance, reduced amylase activity, affected differentiation of embryonic root elongation zone tissues, suppressed embryonic root and shoot growth, and impaired pollen tube elongation. In contrast, overexpression of OsDim1 showed significant growth in embryonic roots and shoots, while it increased culm length, total number of tillers per plant, seed setting rate, and total number of grains per panicle compared to its wild type line. In summary, we propose OsDim1 plays an important role in seedling growth and pollen tube elongation, and has pleiotropic effects on reproductive tissues.