Heterologous expression of a lycophyte protein enhances angiosperm seedling vigor - Archive ouverte HAL Access content directly
Journal Articles Development (Cambridge, England) Year : 2022

Heterologous expression of a lycophyte protein enhances angiosperm seedling vigor

Samuel Koh
  • Function : Author
H. Nicholay Diaz-Ardila
  • Function : Author
Carlisle Bascom
  • Function : Author
Eduardo Berenguer
  • Function : Author
Gwyneth Ingram
Mark Estelle
  • Function : Author
Christian Hardtke
  • Function : Author

Abstract

Seedling vigor is a key agronomic trait that determines juvenile plant performance. Angiosperm seeds develop inside fruits and are connected to the mother plant through vascular tissues. Their formation requires plant-specific genes, such as BREVIS RADIX (BRX) in Arabidopsis thaliana roots. BRX family proteins are found throughout the euphyllophytes but also occur in non-vascular bryophytes and non-seed lycophytes. They consist of four conserved domains, including the tandem “BRX-domains”. We found that bryophyte or lycophyte BRX homologs can only partially substitute for Arabidopsis BRX (AtBRX) because they miss key features in the linker between the BRX-domains. Intriguingly however, expression of a BRX homolog from the lycophyte Selaginella moellendorffii (SmBRX) in A. thaliana wildtype background confers robustly enhanced root growth vigor that persists throughout the life cycle. This effect can be traced to a substantial increase in seed and embryo size, is associated with enhanced vascular tissue proliferation, and can be reproduced with a modified, “SmBRX-like” variant of AtBRX. Our results thus suggest that BRX variants can boost seedling vigor and shed light on the activity of ancient, non-angiosperm BRX family proteins.
Fichier principal
Vignette du fichier
Koh_et_al_2022-Dev-revised (1).pdf (14.17 Mo) Télécharger le fichier
Origin : Files produced by the author(s)

Dates and versions

hal-03812135 , version 1 (07-11-2022)

Identifiers

Cite

Samuel Koh, H. Nicholay Diaz-Ardila, Carlisle Bascom, Eduardo Berenguer, Gwyneth Ingram, et al.. Heterologous expression of a lycophyte protein enhances angiosperm seedling vigor. Development (Cambridge, England), 2022, 149 (21), ⟨10.1242/dev.200917⟩. ⟨hal-03812135⟩
19 View
27 Download

Altmetric

Share

Gmail Facebook Twitter LinkedIn More