Auxin production in the endosperm drives seed coat development in Arabidopsis

  1. Duarte D Figueiredo
  2. Rita A Batista
  3. Pawel J Roszak
  4. Lars Hennig
  5. Claudia Köhler  Is a corresponding author
  1. Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Sweden

Abstract

In flowering plants, seed development is initiated by fusion of the maternal egg and central cells with two paternal sperm cells, leading to the formation of embryo and endosperm, respectively. The fertilization products are surrounded by the maternally derived seed coat, whose development prior to fertilization is blocked by epigenetic regulators belonging to the Polycomb Group (PcG) protein family. Here we show that fertilization of the central cell results in the production of auxin and most likely its export to the maternal tissues, which drives seed coat development by removing PcG function. We furthermore show that mutants for the MADS-box transcription factor AGL62 have impaired transport of auxin from the endosperm to the integuments, which results in seed abortion. We propose that AGL62 regulates auxin transport from the endosperm to the integuments, leading to the removal of the PcG block on seed coat development.

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Author details

  1. Duarte D Figueiredo

    Department of Plant Biology, Uppsala BioCenter, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0001-7990-3592
  2. Rita A Batista

    Department of Plant Biology, Uppsala BioCenter, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  3. Pawel J Roszak

    Department of Plant Biology, Uppsala BioCenter, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  4. Lars Hennig

    Department of Plant Biology, Uppsala BioCenter, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
  5. Claudia Köhler

    Department of Plant Biology, Uppsala BioCenter, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden
    For correspondence
    claudia.kohler@slu.se
    Competing interests
    The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
    ORCID icon "This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-2619-4857

Funding

European Research Council

  • Claudia Köhler

Vetenskapsrådet

  • Claudia Köhler

Knut och Alice Wallenbergs Stiftelse

  • Claudia Köhler

Olle Engkvist Byggmästare Foundation

  • Claudia Köhler

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Copyright

© 2016, Figueiredo 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. Duarte D Figueiredo
  2. Rita A Batista
  3. Pawel J Roszak
  4. Lars Hennig
  5. Claudia Köhler
(2016)
Auxin production in the endosperm drives seed coat development in Arabidopsis
eLife 5:e20542.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.20542

Share this article

https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.20542

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