Identification of new members of Fertilisation Independent Seed Polycomb Group pathway involved in the control of seed development inArabidopsis thaliana

Abstract

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Alterations in Seed Development Gene Expression Affect Size and Oil Content of Arabidopsis Seeds

“…To study the influence of alterations in the seed developmental program on metabolism and on the accumulation of the storage components, Arabidopsis genes known to be involved in seed development were selected for analysis: FIE (At3g20740), PHE1 (At1g65330), MINI3 (At1g55600), and IKU2 (At3g19700). Mutant lines were derived from the original alleles (fie-11, phe1-1, mini3-1, mini3-2, and iku2-3; Guitton et al, 2004;Köhler et al, 2005;Luo et al, 2005). Furthermore, new alleles carrying transfer DNA (T-DNA) or transposon insertions were obtained from stock centers (fie-13, fie-14, phe1-6, phe1-7, mini3-3, and iku2-4; Fig.…”

“…The mutant fie-11 was obtained from NASC (Guitton et al, 2004). Two new alleles, fie-13 (GK-362D08) and fie-14 (GK-532F01), were obtained from NASC (GABI-Kat).…”

Mechanisms and evolution of genomic imprinting in plants

“…The FIS PcG complex is essential for seed development, and lack of any known component of this complex causes abnormal embryo and endosperm development leading to seed abortion (Ohad et al, 1996;Chaudhury et al, 1997;Grossniklaus et al, 1998;Kiyosue et al, 1999;Kö hler et al, 2003a;Guitton et al, 2004). Developmental defects are associated with increased expression of PHE1 and many other genes in the endosperm (Kang et al, 2008;Kö hler et al, 2003b;Erilova et al, 2009), suggesting that the main function of the FIS PcG complex is to suppress dosage sensitive genes in the endosperm.…”

Endosperm: an integrator of seed growth and development

“…Loss-of-function mutations of FIS genes cause autonomous onset of cell division in the central cell in the absence of fertilization [14,15]. The FIS complex also includes the WD40 protein MULTICOPY SUPPRESSOR OF IRA 1 (MSI1) [16,17]. Unexpectedly, when compared to the fis mutants, msi mutants show additional autonomous division in the egg cell that leads to a non-viable parthenogenetic embryo [18 ].…”

“…The paternal allele of MEA and FIS2 is silenced. As a consequence, the maternal inheritance of a null allele, mea or fis2, cannot be rescued by a paternal wildtype MEA or FIS2 allele and is sufficient to cause maternal effects on endosperm development [11,14,15,17].…”