Elevation of Pollen Mitochondrial DNA Copy Number by WHIRLY2: Altered Respiration and Pollen Tube Growth in Arabidopsis

In plants, the copy number of the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) can be much lower than the number of mitochondria. The biological significance and regulatory mechanisms of this phenomenon remain poorly understood. Here, using the pollen vegetative cell, we examined the role of the Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) mtDNA-binding protein WHIRLY2 (AtWHY2). AtWHY2 decreases during pollen development, in parallel with the rapid degradation of mtDNA; to examine the importance of this decrease, we used the pollen vegetative cell-specific promoter Lat52 to express AtWHY2. The transgenic plants (LWHY2) had very high mtDNA levels in pollen, more than 10 times more than in the wild type (ecotype Columbia-0). LWHY2 plants were fertile, morphologically normal, and set seeds; however, reciprocal crosses with heterozygous plants showed reduced transmission of LWHY2-1 through the male and slower growth of LWHY2-1 pollen tubes. We found that LWHY2-1 pollen had significantly more reactive oxygen species and less ATP compared with the wild type, indicating an effect on mitochondrial respiration. These findings reveal that AtWHY2 affects mtDNA copy number in pollen and suggest that low mtDNA copy numbers might be the normal means by which plant cells maintain mitochondrial genetic information.