Irreversible fate commitment in the Arabidopsis stomatal lineage requires a FAMA and RETINOBLASTOMA-RELATED module

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Abstract

The presumed totipotency of plant cells leads to questions about how specific stem cell lineages and terminal fates could be established. In the Arabidopsis stomatal lineage, a transient self-renewing phase creates precursors that differentiate into one of two epidermal cell types, guard cells or pavement cells. We found that irreversible differentiation of guard cells involves RETINOBLASTOMA-RELATED (RBR) recruitment to regulatory regions of master regulators of stomatal initiation, facilitated through interaction with a terminal stomatal lineage transcription factor, FAMA. Disrupting physical interactions between FAMA and RBR preferentially reveals the role of RBR in enforcing fate commitment over its role in cell-cycle control in this developmental context. Analysis of the phenotypes linked to the modulation of FAMA and RBR sheds new light on the way iterative divisions and terminal differentiation are coordinately regulated in a plant stem-cell lineage.

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Juliana L Matos

Stanford University, Stanford, United States

Competing interests
No competing interests declared.
On Sun Lau

Stanford University, Stanford, United States

Competing interests
No competing interests declared.
Charles Hachez

Université Catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium

Competing interests
No competing interests declared.
Alfredo Cruz-Ramírez

CINVESTAV, Irapuato, Mexico

Competing interests
No competing interests declared.
Ben Scheres

Wageningen University, Wageningen, Netherlands

Competing interests
No competing interests declared.
Dominique C Bergmann

Stanford University, Stanford, United States

For correspondence
bergmann@stanford.edu

Competing interests
Dominique C Bergmann, Reviewing editor, eLife.

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