Oral Presentation International Plant Molecular Biology Conference 2024

Brassinosteroid receptor-mediated regulation of tissue regeneration in Arabidopsis (#253)

Ye Zhang 1 , Kazuki Suita 1 , Naoki Takahashi 2 , Masaaki Umeda 1
  1. Graduate School of Science and Technology, , Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Ikoma, Nara, Japan
  2. Department of Life Sciences, School of Agriculture, Meiji University, Kawasaki, Kanagawa, Japan

Plants often endure wounding and cell death caused by environmental stresses. In tissues, plant cells cannot move while acquiring cell identities based on positional information. Therefore, replenishment of dead cells based on cell-to-cell communication is crucial for plant survival. Under DNA stress, dividing cells arrest the cell cycle at G2, while stem cells actively die to maintain genome stability in descendant cells. When released from DNA stress, cells neighboring the dead stem cells undergo replenishing divisions to restore the stem cell niche. We have recently reported that the brassinosteroid (BR) receptor BRL3 is induced through the signaling pathway governing DNA damage response (Takahashi et al., 2024). BRL3 is necessary for the activation of replenishing cell division; the brl3 mutant is defective in root stem cell replenishment after DNA damage. We also found that BRL3 is regulated through another pathway, which allows further induction of BRL3. We revealed that both pathways play essential roles in activating replenishing cell division, highlighting a novel system controlling dead cell replenishment. We shall discuss how this system is generally applied to replenishing cell division, and how it contributes to maintaining proper cellular organization during tissue regeneration.

  1. Takahashi N, Suita K, Koike T, Ogita N, Zhang Y, Umeda M. 2024. DNA double-strand breaks enhance brassinosteroid signaling to activate quiescent center cell division in Arabidopsis. Journal of Experimental Botany, erad424.