Lecture 10 - Plant stem cells and meristems Flashcards
What is the shoot apical meristem and what is its structure?
- the source of all above ground organs
- key to the continued growth and function of the meristem
- small population of densely packed stem cells at the tip of the meristem
What do the small population of densely packed stem cells at the tip of the meristem differentiate into?
Vascular tissues
Below L3
What are the functions of the shoot apical meristem?
- Make lateral organs on the flanks
2. Maintain the meristem (through asymmetric cell division)
How do the stem cells of the shoot apical meristem divide?
Stem cell divides into a daughter cell that will differentiate into a new type and another that will replace the parent and maintain the stem cell population ,provding a new source of cells for differentiation
How can we find out how meristematic stem cells work?
Reveal key genes by mutagenesis screens
What have mutagenesis screens revealed about the phenotype of a wuschel mutant and what was the experiment?
Wild type
-produces leaves in bullk then eventually stops producing leaves and produces long shoot before producing leaves again
Wuschel mutant
-‘stop start’ phenotype/development
-‘stop’ = missing a dome with initiation of leaves
-‘start’ = lots of domes
-instead of one cell remaining as a stem cell both cells divide meaning that the sc population is not maintained
-continually produces whirls of leaves then a short shoot region then whirls of leaves
-eventually will flower
What is the molecular mechanism of wuschel?
- encodes a transcription factor
- expressed in the heart of the SAM in a small number (in situ hybridisation)
- lack of WUS fails to result in maintainin the SAM
What is the function of the CLAVATA genes?
-important meristematic function in development and regulation
What is the CLAVATA mutant phenotyp?
- opposite to wuschel
- ‘runaway expanding meristem ‘
- enlarged meristem ‘strap like’
- stem cell population is enlarged
- tends to expand laterally
How many CLAVATA genes are there and what are their features?
3 CLAVATA genes
- same mutant phenotype
- CLV1 and CLV2 encode receptor kinases
- CLV3 encodes a secreted pre-protein cleaved to give an extracellular peptide
- overlapping domains of expression
- CLV genes expressed in a slightly broader region of meristem than WUS
- lact of the CLV genes results in a runaway expanding meristem
What type of pathways of regulating the meristem size do CLAVATA and WUS mutants show?
CLAVATA -restrictive pathway reduced -promotive pathway increased -bigger flowers -more cells WUS -promotive pathway reduced -restrictive pathway increased -reduction in the number of stemcells
Balance between restrictive and promotive pathway regulated meristem size
How do WUS and CLV interact?
SAM maintainence feedback loop
-WUS gene essential for stem cell identity
-domain of WUS kept in check by the CLV signalling pathway
-WUS feeds back to up-regulate CLV3 expression
CLV3 (signalling peptide) binds to CLV1 (receptor) which represses the activity of WUS (transcription factor) which normally promotes the expression of CLV3
What is epistasis?
When the effect of one gene depends on the presence of one or more modifier genes
-identify when do a double gene knockout, and the phenotype you see is of one of the genes, that means that that gene is epistatic to the other
LEARN THAT ^ IT IS V. IMPORTANT
How is the wus mutation epistatic to the clv mutation?
- in the double mutant the wus phenotype is all you can see
- suggest wus is at the end of the pathway
- fits in with the SAM maintenence feedback loop
What happens to the domain of expression of WUS in a clv mutant phenotype?
- normally expression in a small number of cell in the SAM
- in clv mutant, WUS expession expands massively beneath the surface (lose the repressive part of the pathway, no CLV3 to repression wus expression), meristam is much larger