Work

Photosynthetic sucrose acts as cotyledon-derived long-distance signal to control root growth during early seedling development in Arabidopsis

Year: 2012

Type: article

Abstract: The most hazardous span in the life of green plants is the period after germination when the developing seedling must reach the state of autotrophy before the nutrients stored in the seed are exhausted. The need for an economically optimized utilization of limited resources in this critical period is particularly obvious in species adopting the dispersal strategy of producing a large amount of tiny seeds. The model plant Arabidopsis thaliana belongs to this category. Arabidopsis seedlings promote root development only in the light. This response to light has long been recognized and recently discussed in terms of an organ-autonomous feature of photomorphogenesis directed by the red/blue light absorbing photoreceptors phytochrome and cryptochrome and mediated by hormones such as auxin and/or gibberellin. Here we show that the primary root of young Arabidopsis seedlings responds to an interorgan signal from the cotyledons and that phloem transport of photosynthesis-derived sugar into the root tip is necessary and sufficient for the regulation of root elongation growth by light.

Source: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1203746109

Authors: Stefan Kircher, Peter Schopfer

Institutions: University of Freiburg, Duke University

Language: English

Topic: Light effects on plants

Subfield: Plant Science

Field: Agricultural and Biological Sciences

Domain: Life Sciences

SDG: Zero hunger

Open Access status: bronze

Funder: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft