This weeks Arabidopsis Research Roundup is lead by two papers that characterise the relationship between cell size and growth in different Arabidopsis tissues. Firstly the lab of GARNet PI Jim Murray look at how the cell cycle influences cell size progression in the SAM whilst George Bassel’s group from Birmingham investigate cell growth within a developing embryo. Thirdly is a paper from the University of Essex that further defines the role of the CP12 protein in control of photosynthesis. Next is a paper from researchers from the University of Warwick who lead a fascinating piece of rocket science that identifies differences in the vernalisation requirement across Brassica species whilst in the fifth paper, researchers from Lancaster identify environmentally defined QTLs that determine the plant response to glutamate. Finally is a paper that highlights a new software tool that has the self-explanatory title of the ‘UEA small RNA Workbench’ and is applicable for use with plant-derived datasets.
R Jones A, Forero-Vargas M, Withers SP, Smith RS, Traas J, Dewitte W, Murray JAH (2017) Cell-size dependent progression of the cell cycle creates homeostasis and flexibility of plant cell size. Nat Commun http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms15060
Open Access
This study comes from the lab of current GARNet PI Jim Murray at the Cardiff University. Lead author Angharad Jones kindly provides an audio description of the paper for the GARNet YouTube channel. This investigation looks at the factors that control the interaction between cell size and cell growth in a developing shoot meristem. They show that the dynamic regulation of this relationship is linked to the activity of two cyclin dependent kinases (CDKs) and that cell size is key in controlling the transition from G1>S and from G2>M phases of the cell cycle. Importantly this work uses precise imaging to track the progression of individual cell lineages and is therefore able to suggest that cell size is an emergent and not a directly determined property.
Souza NM, Topham AT, Bassel GW (2017) Quantitative analysis of the 3D cell shape changes driving soybean germination. J Exp Bot. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jxb/erx048
Open Access
George Bassel (University of Birmingham) leads this paper that uses information gained from the study of patterns of cell expansion in Arabidopsis embryos to investigate a similar process in soybean. Indeed as in Arabidopsis they show that there is preferential early cell expansion closest to the soybean radicle and that starting cell size corresponds to different growth rates. In addition they show that the growing hypocotyl has complex regulation and that differential ansiotrophy growth drives forward the process of germination. Ultimately they show that this occurs equivalently in both model and crop species.
Elena López-Calcagno P, Omar Abuzaid A, Lawson T, Anne Raines C (2017) Arabidopsis CP12 mutants have reduced levels of phosphoribulokinase and impaired function of the Calvin-Benson cycle. J Exp Bot http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jxb/erx084 Open Access
This study from the photosynthesis group at the University of Essex is led by Tracey Lawson and GARNet committee member Christine Raines. They investigate the role of the CP12 multigene family that has three members in Arabidopsis. These are redox-sensitive proteins that facilitate the formation of a complex between glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH) and phosphoribulokinase (PRK) during the Calvin-Benson cycle. They show that plants with reduced levels of CP12-1 or CP12-2 have lower photosynthetic capacity and subsequently exhibit slower growth. The cell biological explanation for this alteration appears to focus on the PRK protein, which is present at lower levels in plants with reduced CP12-1 or CP12-2. Therefore the authors find that CP12-1 and CP12-2 are the key members of this gene family and they likely show functional redundancy in the tight control of photosynthesis.
Taylor JL, Massiah A, Kennedy S, Hong Y, Jackson SD (2017) FLC expression is down-regulated by cold treatment in Diplotaxis tenuifolia (wild rocket), but flowering time is unaffected. J Plant Physiol.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jplph.2017.03.015 Open Access
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Steve Jackson (University of Warwick) leads this work that also features Chinese collaborators and investigates the role of FLOWERING LOCUS C (FLC) in the popular peppery salad plant Rocket (Diplotaxis tenuifolia) that, as a Brassica, is a somewhat closely related to Arabdopsis. The authors studied the vernalisation requirement in this plant so isolated its version of FLC, which was shown to functional compliment an Arabidopsis flc null mutant. However they showed that even though cold treatment reduced levels of DtFLC this did not alter the bolting time of the plant. This somewhat surprising result demonstrates that the link between FLC and flowering time is uncoupled in this species and that other mechanisms may take precedence, a situation different to that observed in Arabidopsis and other Brassicas.
Walch-Liu P, Meyer RC, Altmann T, Forde BG (2017) QTL analysis of the developmental response to L-glutamate in Arabidopsis roots and its genotype-by-environment interactions. J Exp Bot.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jxb/erx132 Open Access Researchers from the groups of Brian Forde (Lancaster University) and Thomas Altmann (Leibniz Institute) collaborate in this research that identifies three novel QTLs (GluS1-3) that are involved in the response of Arabdopsis roots to external L-glutamate. When this experiment was extended they discovered that different environmental factors play a significant role in the control of this trait. The GluS1 locus is located on Chr3 yet is epistatically controlled by loci on Chr1 and Chr5 in response to temperatures. Overall this study demonstrates that the response to glutamate is controlled by multiple environmentally sensitive loci that vary between Arabidopsis ecotypes
Mohorianu I, Stocks MB, Applegate CS, Folkes L, Moulton V (2017) The UEA Small RNA Workbench: A Suite of Computational Tools for Small RNA Analysis. Methods Mol Biol.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-6866-4_14
This manuscript from the University of East Anglia describes a set of software tools for the analysis of small RNAs. They used an Arabidopsis dataset to demonstrate the utility of the UEA small RNA Workbench, which can be found here: http://srna-workbench.cmp.uea.ac.uk/
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