Rice with purple colored pericarp deposit anthocyanin on the seed coat and color accumulation increased rapidly during seed development. The purple color of rice pericarp is genetically determined by the Prp locus. Inheritance of purple pericarp was studied in Prp/ Kumgangbyeo (indica type Korean variety). Pericarp color of the F1 plants was purple and the F2 population of 274 plants segregated into 3 purple: 1 white ratio indicating dominant nature of the purple color. Comparative proteomic approaches using 2-DE were applied to analyze the protein profiles and molecular mechanism of purple color formation in ricepericarp. Results revealed that approximately 1,500protein spots were reproducibly detected in the gels with silver staining across the two biological replicates. Among them, 46 proteins were expressed differentially between purple color pericarp rice and white color pericarp of the wild type rice, in which 28 and 16 protein spots were more than two fold up regulated in the wild type and purple pericarp, respectively. MALDI-TOF MS analysis of nine spots revealed that putative fructokinase,embryo-specific protein and one unknown proteins were abundant in the wild type, whereas, anthocyanidin synthase, putative chloroplast inner envelope protein, and dihydroflavonol reductase were highly abundant in the Prp rice. Results indicated anthocyanidin synthase and/or dihydroflavonol reductase might be involved in the biosynthetic pathway of the purple color formation in the rice pericarp. [This research was supported by the Grant funded by Agricultural R&D Promotion Center, ARPC (IPET project number: 108091-05-1-CG000)].

• Mohammad Mominur Rahman(Department of Biotechnology, Yeungnam University)
• Mohammad Nurul Matin(Department of Biotechnology, Yeungnam University)
• Saifullah Ahmed Saief(Department of Biotechnology, Yeungnam University)
• Sang Gu Kang(Department of Biotechnology, Yeungnam University) Corresponding author