Brassinosteroids (BRs) are potent regulators of photosynthesis and crop yield in agricultural crops; however, the mechanism by which BRs increase photosynthesis is not fully understood. Here, we show that foliar application of 24-epibrassinolide (EBR) resulted in increases in CO2 assimilation, hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) accumulation, and leaf area in cucumber. H2O2 treatment induced increases in CO2 assimilation whilst inhibition of the H2O2 accumulation by its generation inhibitor or scavenger completely abolished EBR-induced CO2 assimilation. Increases of light harvesting due to larger leaf areas in EBR- and H2O2-treated plants were accompanied by increases in the photochemical efficiency of photosystem II (ΦPSII) and photochemical quenching coefficient (q P). EBR and H2O2 both activated carboxylation efficiency of ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate oxygenase/carboxylase (Rubisco) from analysis of CO2 response curve and in vitro measurement of Rubisco activities. Moreover, EBR and H2O2 increased contents of total soluble sugar, sucrose, hexose, and starch, followed by enhanced activities of sugar metabolism such as sucrose phosphate synthase, sucrose synthase, and invertase. Interestingly, expression of transcripts of enzymes involved in starch and sugar utilization were inhibited by EBR and H2O2. However, the effects of EBR on carbohydrate metabolisms were reversed by the H2O2 generation inhibitor diphenyleneodonium (DPI) or scavenger dimethylthiourea (DMTU) pretreatment. All of these results indicate that H2O2 functions as a secondary messenger for EBR-induced CO2 assimilation and carbohydrate metabolism in cucumber plants. Our study confirms that H2O2 mediates the regulation of photosynthesis by BRs and suggests that EBR and H2O2 regulate Calvin cycle and sugar metabolism via redox signaling and thus increase the photosynthetic potential and yield of crops.

The development of expressed sequence tags (ESTs) from pea has provided a useful source for mining novel simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers. In the present research, in order to find EST-derived SSR markers, 18 552 pea ESTs from the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) database were downloaded and assembled into 10 086 unigenes. A total of 586 microsatellites in 530 unigenes were identified, indicating that merely 5.25% of sequences contained SSRs. The most abundant SSRs within pea were tri-nucleotide repeat motifs, and among all the tri-nucleotide repeats, the motif GAA was the most abundant type. In total, 49 SSRs were used for primer design. EST-SSR loci were subsequently screened on 10 widely adapted varieties in China. Of these, nine loci showed polymorphic profiles that revealed two to three alleles per locus. The polymorphism information content value ranged from 0.18 to 0.58 with an average of 0.41. Furthermore, transferable analysis revealed that some of these loci showed transferability to faba bean. Because of their polymorphism and transferability, these nine novel EST-SSRs will be valuable tools for marker-assisted breeding and comparative mapping of pea in the future.

Brassinosteroids (BRs) are essential for many biological processes in plants, however, little is known about their roles in early fruit development. To address this, BR levels were manipulated through the application of exogenous BRs (24-epibrassinolide, EBR) or a BR biosynthesis inhibitor (brassinazole, Brz) and their effects on early fruit development, cell division, and expression of cyclin and cyclin-dependent kinases (CDKs) genes were examined in two cucumber cultivars that differ in parthenocarpic capacity. The application of EBR induced parthenocarpic growth accompanied by active cell division in Jinchun No. 4, a cultivar without parthenocarpic capacity, whereas Brz treatment inhibited fruit set and, subsequently, fruit growth in Jinchun No. 2, a cultivar with natural parthenocarpic capacity, and this inhibitory effect could be rescued by the application of EBR. RT-PCR analysis showed both pollination and EBR induced expression of cell cycle-related genes (CycA, CycB, CycD3;1, CycD3;2, and CDKB) after anthesis. cDNA sequences for CsCycD3;1 and CsCycD3;2 were isolated through PCR amplification. Both CsCycD3;1 and CsCycD3;2 transcripts were up-regulated by EBR treatment and pollination but strongly repressed by Brz treatment. Meanwhile, BR6ox1 and SMT transcripts, two genes involved in BR synthesis, exhibited feedback regulation. These results strongly suggest that BRs play an important role during early fruit development in cucumber.