ABSTRACT
Characterization of weak shoot defective mutants in the
background of poltergeist mutant in Arabidopsis
Young-Bin Yun
Advisor : Assistant Prof. Sang-Kee Song, Ph.D.
Department of Life Science,
Graduate School of Chosun University
Partial los...
ABSTRACT
Characterization of weak shoot defective mutants in the
background of poltergeist mutant in Arabidopsis
Young-Bin Yun
Advisor : Assistant Prof. Sang-Kee Song, Ph.D.
Department of Life Science,
Graduate School of Chosun University
Partial loss-of-function mutants could be useful to understand fine
functions of a gene of which a null mutation leads to severe defects such as
lethality and lack of organ development. poltergeist (pol) mutant provides a
proper sensitized background to screen for weak shoot defective mutants that
is hardly found in the wild-type background. Here, filamentous gynoecium-1
(fig-1) pol-6 double mutant displaying slightly reduced floral meristem has
been screened from a mutant pool induced by the introduction of activation
tags in the pol-6 background. The T-DNA insertion site was localized in the
promoter region of a homeo-domain gene, SHOOTMERISTEMLESS (STM)
by using next generation sequencing analysis. fig-1 single mutant exhibited
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defects in floral organ abscission mainly due to the fusion of sepals. Two
additional weak alleles, each possessing a T-DNA insertion in the promoter,
stm-p1 and stm-p3 also exhibited weak inflorescence defects together with
abscission defects. Furthermore, stm-p1 pol-6 displayed filamentous
gynoecium phenotype. The reverse-transcription PCR analysis showed that
STM expression in fig-1, stm-p1 and stm-p3 was reduced compared with
that in wild-type plants. Interestingly, the width of abscission zone (AZ) of
fig-1, stm-p1, and stm-p3 was shorter than that of WT while the length of
the siliques. The expression pattern of floral abscission related genes such as
HAESApro:GUS, KNAT2pro:GUS, KNAT6pro:GUS, and KNAT1pro:GUS in
the stm-p1 was not changed as compared with that in WT suggesting that
STM is involved in the development of sepal boundary and the growth of AZ
rather than in the canonical pathway for the floral AZ development.
POLTERGEIST (POL) and POL-LIKE1 (PLL1) coding for related protein
phosphatase 2C (PP2C) are required for the establishment of shoot and root
meristems during embryogenesis. As strong pol pll1 double mutants are
seedling-lethal due to the lack of vasculature along the embryo axis, their
late vegetative and reproductive phenotypes could only be observed only
after grafting. To avoid any artificial effect possibly led by grafting, a weak
pll1 allele (pll1-4) has been selected among the T-DNA insertion mutants
and a partial loss-of-function double mutant (pol-6 pll1-4) has been
prepared. About 10% of pol-6 pll1-4 seedlings developed vasculature in the
hypocotyl and were able to exhibit post-embryonic phenotypes
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spontaneously. The above-ground organs of pol-6 pll1-4 phenocopied
wuschel mutant displaying adventitious phyllotaxis and inflorescence and
defective flowers lacking any gynoecium together with reduced CLV3pro:GUS
expression. The phenotypes of pol-6 pll1-4 clv2-1 and pol-6 pll1-4 clv3-
2 were similar to that of pol-6 pll1-4 suggestive of the epistasis between
POL/PLL1 and CLVs. In addition, pol-6 pll1-4 exhibited severely reduced
root meristem as shown by the reduced expression of root meristem markers
such as WOX5pro:GUS which was further confirmed with reporter expression
such as WOX5pro:GUS and SCRpro:GUS, Unexpectedly, the pll1-4 mutation
leading to the weak pol-6 pll1-4 was identified as a point mutation in an
amino acid located in one of the conserved PP2C motifs instead of the TDNA
insertion localized in the promoter region of PLL1.