An epidermis-driven mechanism positions and scales stem cell niches in plants

Jérémy Gruel (1) , Benoit Landrein (1, 2) , Paul Tarr (3) , Christoph Schuster (1) , Yassin Refahi (2) , Arun Sampathkumar (3) , Olivier O. Hamant (2) , Elliot M. Meyerowitz (3, 1) , Henrik Jönsson (4, 1)

1 SLCU - Sainsbury Laboratory Cambridge University
2 RDP - Reproduction et développement des plantes
3 Division of Biology [Pasadena]
4 Skane University Hospital [Lund]

How molecular patterning scales to organ size is highly debated in developmental biology. We explore this question for the characteristic gene expression domains of the plant stem cell niche residing in the shoot apical meristem. We show that a combination of signals originating from the epidermal cell layer can correctly pattern the key gene expression domains and notably leads to adaptive scaling of these domains to the size of the tissue. Using live imaging, we experimentally confirm this prediction. The identified mechanism is also sufficient to explain de novo stem cell niches in emerging flowers. Our findings suggest that the deformation of the tissue transposes meristem geometry into an instructive scaling and positional input for the apical plant stem cell niche.

Keywords: arabidopsis shoot meristem; feedback; growth; wuschel; apex; differentiation; homeostasis; repression

Keywords: expression

Domains: Life Sciences [q-bio]; Vegetal Biology

Jérémy Gruel, Benoit Landrein, Paul Tarr, Christoph Schuster, Yassin Refahi, et al.. An epidermis-driven mechanism positions and scales stem cell niches in plants. Science Advances , 2016, 2 (1), ⟨10.1126/sciadv.1500989⟩. ⟨hal-02632583⟩