The EMBO Journal

Developmental regulation of CYCA2s contributes to tissue-specific proliferation in Arabidopsis

In multicellular organisms, morphogenesis relies on a strict coordination in time and space of cell proliferation and differentiation. In contrast to animals, plant development displays continuous organ formation and adaptive growth responses during their lifespan relying on a tight coordination of cell proliferation. How developmental signals interact with the plant cell-cycle machinery is largely unknown. Here, we characterize plant A2-type cyclins, a small gene family of mitotic cyclins, and show how they contribute to the fine-tuning of local proliferation during plant development. Moreover, the timely repression of CYCA2;3 expression in newly formed guard cells is shown to require the stomatal transcription factors FOUR LIPS/MYB124 and MYB88, providing a direct link between developmental programming and cell-cycle exit in plants. Thus, transcriptional downregulation of CYCA2s represents a critical mechanism to coordinate proliferation during plant development.

Steffen Vanneste^1,^2,⁷, Frederik Coppens^1,^2,⁷, EunKyoung Lee³, Tyler J Donner⁴, Zidian Xie⁵, Gert Van Isterdael^1,², Stijn Dhondt^1,², Freya De Winter^1,², Bert De Rybel^1,^2,⁸, Marnik Vuylsteke^1,², Lieven De Veylder^1,², Jiří Friml^1,², Dirk Inzé^1,², Erich Grotewold⁵, Enrico Scarpella⁴, Fred Sack³, Gerrit T S Beemster^1,^2,⁶ and Tom Beeckman^1,²

Department of Plant Systems Biology, VIB, Ghent, Belgium
Department of Plant Biotechnology and Bioinformatics, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium
Department of Botany, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Department of Biological Sciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Department of Plant Cellular and Molecular Biology and Plant Biotechnology Center, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA
Department of Biology, University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium

The EMBO Journal (2011) 30, 3430 – 3441. Full paper here.

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