The first Arabidopsis Research Roundup of 2017 includes a wide range of studies that use our favourite model organism.
Firstly Kerry Franklin (University of Bristol) is the corresponding author on a paper that describes the complex interaction between the responses to sunlight and heat. Secondly Paul Dupree (University of Cambridge) leads a study that defines the important structural relationship between xylan and cellulose. Thirdly members of Gos Micklem’s group in Cambridge are part of the Araport team that present their ThaleMine tool.
Richard Napier (University of Warwick) is a co-author on the fourth paper that introduces a new chemical tool for study of the auxin response. The penultimate paper includes Matthew Terry (University of Southampton) on a paper that investigates the role of a Fe-S-containing protein cluster in chlorophyll biosynthesis and finally there is a methods paper from Stefanie Rosa in Caroline Dean’s lab at the John Innes Centre that describes the use of FISH to detect single molecules of RNA.
Hayes S, Sharma A, Fraser DP, Trevisan M, Cragg-Barber CK, Tavridou E, Fankhauser C, Jenkins GI, Franklin KA (2016) UV-B Perceived by the UVR8 Photoreceptor Inhibits Plant Thermomorphogenesis. Current Biology http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2016.11.004
Open Access
This collaboration between the research groups of Kerry Franklin (University of Bristol) and Gareth Jenkins (University of Glasgow) looks at how the perception of UV-B light inhibits the morphological changes that occur in response to increased temperatures (thermomorphogenesis). This response includes induced hypocotyl elongation, which is mediated via PIF4 and various players in the auxin response. Interestingly the authors show that UV-B light perceived by UVR8 attenautes this response by preventing PIF4 abundance and by stabilising the the bHLH protein LONG HYPOCOTYL IN FAR RED (HFR1) protein. These results suggest that there exists a precise mechanism for fine-tuning the growth responses that occur in sunlight that would usually include both increased temperature and UV-B irradiation.
Simmons TJ, Mortimer JC, Bernardinelli OD, Pöppler AC, Brown SP, deAzevedo ER, Dupree R, Dupree P (2016) Folding of xylan onto cellulose fibrils in plant cell walls revealed by solid-state NMR. Nat Commun.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms13902 Open Access
In this paper Paul Dupree (University Cambridge) collaborates both with colleagues in Spain and with his father Ray, who is a physicist at the University of Warwick. They use NMR to perform a structural analysis of xylan, which is the most prevalent non-cellulosic polysaccharide in the cell wall matrix and binds to cellulose microfibrils. Whereas in solution xylan forms a threefold helical screw, it flattens into a twofold helical screw ribbon to closely bind to cellulose when in the cell wall. They used the cellulose-deficient Arabidopsis irx3 mutant to show that the xylan two-fold screw confirmation breaks down when it cannot bind cellulose. The authors state that this finding has important implications in our understanding of the formation of the cell wall and perhaps more importantly how it might be broken down during attempts to maximise economic usages of plant biomass.
A local Cambridge newspaper reported that this finding could ‘pave the way for wooden skyscrapers’
Krishnakumar V, Contrino S, Cheng CY, Belyaeva I, Ferlanti ES, Miller JR, Vaughn MW, Micklem G, Town CD, Chan AP (2016) ThaleMine: A Warehouse for Arabidopsis Data Integration and Discovery. Plant Cell Physiol http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/pcp/pcw200 Open Access
This paper is presented by the Araport team, which is based in the USA but includes representatives from Gos Micklem’s lab in University of Cambridge. They outline the functionality of the ThaleMine data warehouse which is an important component of the tools included on Araport (https://www.araport.org/). ThaleMine collects a wide variety of data from public datasets and presents it in a easy-to-interrogate form, facilitating the experiments of both lab-based researchers or bioinformaticians. This tool is build upon the InterMine software framework, which has been widely adopted across other model organisms.
Chris Town and Sergio Contrino provided a hands-on workshop describing the tools on Araport in last year GARNet2016 meeting and their workshop materials can be downloaded here.
Steenackers WJ, Klíma P, Quareshy M, Cesarino I, Kumpf RP, Corneillie S, Araújo P, Viaene T, Goeminne G, Nowack MK, Ljung K, Friml J, Blakeslee JJ, Novák O, Zažímalová E, Napier RM, Boerjan WA, Vanholme B (2016) cis-cinnamic acid is a novel, natural auxin efflux inhibitor that promotes lateral root formation. Plant Physiol. http://dx.doi.org/pp.00943.2016 Open Access
This pan-european collaboration includes members of Richard Napier’s lab at the University of Warwick. They outline the activity of a novel inhibitor of auxin efflux transport called cis-cinnamic acid (c-CA). When c-CA is applied to growth media plants appears to exhibit an auxin-response phenotype yet these experiments show that c-CA is neither an auxin or anti-auxin and in fact blocks local auxin efflux, thus causing buildup of cellular auxin. This effect does not occur with t-CA showing specificity for c-CA and it does not affect long distance auxin transport, which occurs through the phloem. Therefore this paper presents a new pharamolgical tool for the study of in planta auxin transport and homeostasis.
Hu X, Page MT, Sumida A, Tanaka A, Terry MJ, Tanaka R (2016) The iron-sulfur cluster biosynthesis protein SUFB is required for chlorophyll synthesis, but not phytochrome signaling. Plant J.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/tpj.13455
Matthew Terry and Mike Page (University of Southampton) are co-authors on this Japanese-led study that investigates the function of the SUFB subunit of the SUFBCD iron-sulfur cluster. These Fe-S protein clusters play roles in many metabolic processes and the SUFB mutant hmc1 exhibits a defect in chlorophyll biosynthesis due to an accumulation of Mg-containing biosynthetic intermediates. In addition both SUFC- and SUFD-deficient RNAi lines accumulated the same Mg intermediate indicating that the SUFBCD cluster is responsible for this step necessary for chlorophyll production.
Duncan S, Olsson TS, Hartley M, Dean C, Rosa S (2016) A method for detecting single mRNA molecules in Arabidopsis thaliana. Plant Methods. http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13007-016-0114-x
Open Access
This paper from is lead by Stefanie Rosa in Caroline Dean’s lab at the John Innes Centre describes a novel method for imaging single molecules of RNA by smFISH. They analyse the localisation of both nascent and mature mRNAs, allowing for analysis of the location of RNA processing and translation.<
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