The 30th International Conference on Arabidopsis Research (ICAR 2019)

611 / 2019-04-23 14:14:29

Brassinosteroids facilitate xylem diferentiation and wood formation in tomato

Plant hormone,xylem,secondary growth

Plenary track > Development

Brassinosteroid (BR) signaling and BR crosstalk with diverse signaling cues are involved in the pleiotropic regulation of plant growth and development. Recent studies reported the critical roles of BR biosynthesis and signaling in vascular bundle development and plant secondary growth; however, the molecular bases of these roles are unclear. Here, we performed comparative physiological and anatomical analyses of shoot morphological growth in a cultivated wild-type tomato (Solanum lycopersicum cv. BGA) and a BR biosynthetic mutant Micro Tom (MT). We observed that the canonical BR signaling pathway was essential for xylem differentiation and sequential wood formation by facilitating plant secondary growth. The gradual retardation of xylem development phenotypes during shoot vegetative growth in the BR-deficient MT tomato mutant recovered completely in response to exogenous BR treatment or genetic complementation of the BR biosynthetic DWARF (D) gene. By contrast, overexpression of the tomato SlGSK3 or CRISPR-Cas9 mediated knockout of the tomato SlBRI1 impaired BR signaling and resulted in severely defective xylem differentiation and secondary growth. Genetic modulation of the transcriptional activity of the tomato SlBZR1/SlBZR2 confirmed the positive roles of BR signaling pathways for xylem differentiation and secondary growth. Our data indicate that BR signaling pathways directly promote xylem differentiation and wood formation by canonical BR-activated SlBZR1/SlBZR2.