Identification of a pluripotency-inducing small compound, PLU, that induces callus formation via Heat Shock Protein 90-mediated activation of auxin signaling

Abstract

Plants retain the ability to generate a pluripotent tissue called callus by dedifferentiating somatic cells. A pluripotent callus can also be artificially induced by culturing explants with hormone mixtures of auxin and cytokinin, and an entire body can then be regenerated from the callus. Here we identified a pluripotency-inducing small compound, PLU, that induces the formation of callus with tissue regeneration potency without the external application of either auxin or cytokinin. The PLU-induced callus expressed several marker genes related to pluripotency acquisition via lateral root initiation processes. PLU-induced callus formation required activation of the auxin signaling pathway though the amount of active auxin was reduced by PLU treatment. RNA-seq analysis and subsequent experiments revealed that Heat Shock Protein 90 (HSP90) mediates a significant part of the PLU-initiated early events. We also showed that HSP90-dependent induction of TRANSPORT INHIBITOR RESPONSE 1, an auxin receptor gene, is required for the callus formation by PLU. Collectively, this study provides a new tool for manipulating and investigating the induction of plant pluripotency from a different angle from the conventional method with the external application of hormone mixtures.

Small molecules with hydantoin-containing and spiro-like structures promote devernalization in Arabidopsis

“…To identify DVRs, we used Arabidopsis FLC::LUC reporter lines 22 to screen 16,800 molecules in our Institute of Transformative Bio-Molecules (ITbM) chemical library, an extensive chemical library useful for plant-based phenotypic screening [22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36] . In this screen, we identified five DVRs (DVR01-05) (Fig.…”