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

  1. Juliana L Matos
  2. On Sun Lau
  3. Charles Hachez
  4. Alfredo Cruz-Ramírez
  5. Ben Scheres
  6. Dominique C Bergmann  Is a corresponding author
  1. Stanford University, United States
  2. Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium
  3. CINVESTAV, Mexico
  4. Wageningen University, Netherlands

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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Author details

  1. Juliana L Matos

    Stanford University, Stanford, United States
    Competing interests
    No competing interests declared.
  2. On Sun Lau

    Stanford University, Stanford, United States
    Competing interests
    No competing interests declared.
  3. Charles Hachez

    Université Catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
    Competing interests
    No competing interests declared.
  4. Alfredo Cruz-Ramírez

    CINVESTAV, Irapuato, Mexico
    Competing interests
    No competing interests declared.
  5. Ben Scheres

    Wageningen University, Wageningen, Netherlands
    Competing interests
    No competing interests declared.
  6. Dominique C Bergmann

    Stanford University, Stanford, United States
    For correspondence
    bergmann@stanford.edu
    Competing interests
    Dominique C Bergmann, Reviewing editor, eLife.

Copyright

© 2014, Matos et al.

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.

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  1. Juliana L Matos
  2. On Sun Lau
  3. Charles Hachez
  4. Alfredo Cruz-Ramírez
  5. Ben Scheres
  6. Dominique C Bergmann
(2014)
Irreversible fate commitment in the Arabidopsis stomatal lineage requires a FAMA and RETINOBLASTOMA-RELATED module
eLife 3:e03271.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.03271

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https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.03271

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