Control of plant cell fate transitions by transcriptional and hormonal signals
- Heidelberg University, Germany
- University of California, San Diego, United States
Abstract
Plant meristems carry pools of continuously active stem cells, whose activity is controlled by developmental and environmental signals. After stem cell division, daughter cells that exit the stem cell domain acquire transit amplifying cell identity before they are incorporated into organs and differentiate. In this study, we used an integrated approach to elucidate the role of HECATE (HEC) genes in regulating developmental trajectories of shoot stem cells in Arabidopsis thaliana. Our work reveals that HEC function stabilizes cell fate in distinct zones of the shoot meristem thereby controlling the spatio-temporal dynamics of stem cell differentiation. Importantly, this activity is concomitant with the local modulation of cellular responses to cytokinin and auxin, two key phytohormones regulating cell behaviour. Mechanistically, we show that HEC factors transcriptionally control and physically interact with MONOPTEROS (MP), a key regulator of auxin signalling, and modulate the autocatalytic stabilization of auxin signalling output.
Data availability
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (SFB873)
- Anna Marciniak-Czochra
- Jan U Lohmann
European Social Fund (Elite programm für Postdocs)
- Anne Pfeiffer
Baden-Württemberg Stiftung (Elite programm für Postdocs)
- Anne Pfeiffer
National Institutes of Health (1R01GM112976-01A1)
- Martin F Yanofsky
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Reviewing Editor
- Dominique C Bergmann, Stanford University/HHMI, United States
Version history
- Received: July 3, 2017
- Accepted: October 22, 2017
- Accepted Manuscript published: October 23, 2017 (version 1)
- Accepted Manuscript updated: October 24, 2017 (version 2)
- Accepted Manuscript updated: October 26, 2017 (version 3)
- Version of Record published: November 17, 2017 (version 4)
Copyright
© 2017, Gaillochet et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
Metrics
-
- 6,039
- views
-
- 1,171
- downloads
-
- 39
- citations
Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.
Download links
A two-part list of links to download the article, or parts of the article, in various formats.
Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)
Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)
Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)
Control of plant cell fate transitions by transcriptional and hormonal signals
eLife 6:e30135.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.30135
Further reading
-
- Chromosomes and Gene Expression
- Developmental Biology
Developmental programming involves the accurate conversion of signalling levels and dynamics to transcriptional outputs. The transcriptional relay in the Notch pathway relies on nuclear complexes containing the co-activator Mastermind (Mam). By tracking these complexes in real time, we reveal that they promote the formation of a dynamic transcription hub in Notch ON nuclei which concentrates key factors including the Mediator CDK module. The composition of the hub is labile and persists after Notch withdrawal conferring a memory that enables rapid reformation. Surprisingly, only a third of Notch ON hubs progress to a state with nascent transcription, which correlates with polymerase II and core Mediator recruitment. This probability is increased by a second signal. The discovery that target-gene transcription is probabilistic has far-reaching implications because it implies that stochastic differences in Notch pathway output can arise downstream of receptor activation.
-
- Developmental Biology
Large-scale cell flow characterizes gastrulation in animal development. In amniote gastrulation, particularly in avian gastrula, a bilateral vortex-like counter-rotating cell flow, called ‘polonaise movements’, appears along the midline. Here, through experimental manipulations, we addressed relationships between the polonaise movements and morphogenesis of the primitive streak, the earliest midline structure in amniotes. Suppression of the Wnt/planar cell polarity (PCP) signaling pathway maintains the polonaise movements along a deformed primitive streak. Mitotic arrest leads to diminished extension and development of the primitive streak and maintains the early phase of the polonaise movements. Ectopically induced Vg1, an axis-inducing morphogen, generates the polonaise movements, aligned to the induced midline, but disturbs the stereotypical cell flow pattern at the authentic midline. Despite the altered cell flow, induction and extension of the primitive streak are preserved along both authentic and induced midlines. Finally, we show that ectopic axis-inducing morphogen, Vg1, is capable of initiating the polonaise movements without concomitant PS extension under mitotic arrest conditions. These results are consistent with a model wherein primitive streak morphogenesis is required for the maintenance of the polonaise movements, but the polonaise movements are not necessarily responsible for primitive streak morphogenesis. Our data describe a previously undefined relationship between the large-scale cell flow and midline morphogenesis in gastrulation.
