Abstract
Many differentiated plant cells can dedifferentiate into stem cells, reflecting the remarkable developmental plasticity of plants. In the moss Physcomitrella patens, cells at the wound margin of detached leaves become reprogrammed into stem cells. Here, we report that two paralogous P. patens WUSCHEL-related homeobox 13-like (PpWOX13L) genes, homologs of stem cell regulators in flowering plants, are transiently upregulated and required for the initiation of cell growth during stem cell formation. Concordantly, Δppwox13l deletion mutants fail to upregulate genes encoding homologs of cell wall loosening factors during this process. During the moss life cycle, most of the Δppwox13l mutant zygotes fail to expand and initiate an apical stem cell to form the embryo. Our data show that PpWOX13L genes are required for the initiation of cell growth specifically during stem cell formation, in analogy to WOX stem cell functions in seed plants, but using a different cellular mechanism.
Highlights
Differentiated cells can dedifferentiate under both natural and artificial conditions
In the moss Physcomitrella patens (Physcomitrella), differentiated cells at the wound margin of detached gametophore leaves are reprogrammed into apical stem cells, which subsequently produce the filamentous chloronemata by asymmetric divisions (Prigge and Bezanilla, 2010; Ishikawa et al, 2011)
Stem cell formation in seed plants is tightly associated with the function of WUS-related homeobox (WOX) genes
Summary
Differentiated cells can dedifferentiate under both natural and artificial conditions. Received 11 April 2013; Accepted 13 February 2014 occurs more readily in plants, reflecting the remarkable plasticity of plant cell identity (Birnbaum and Sanchez Alvarado, 2008). It can occur under natural conditions (Steeves and Sussex, 1989) and after wounding or addition of phytohormones (Skoog and Miller, 1957). Several transcription factors involved in the induction of reprogramming have been characterized in flowering plants (Banno et al, 2001; Gordon et al, 2007; Sugimoto et al, 2010; Iwase et al, 2011), no regulators have been reported in non-seed plants
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