Poster: Intercellular Signaling

Abs # 810: Functional analysis of CLE gene family in Arabidopsis

Presenter:	Sharma, Vijay K, vsharma@nature.berkeley.edu
Authors	Sharma, Vijay K (A)   Fletcher, Jennifer C (A)   Baker, Catherine  (B)
Affiliations:	(A): UC Berkeley (B): Caltech, Pasedena

Plants maintain a constant supply of stem cells throughout their lifecycle. All the organs of plant body develop from these pluoripotent cells. Mainly there are two places in plants where stem cells are located, shoot apical meristem houses cells for the development of above ground parts and root apical meristem (SAM) gives rise to below ground parts of plant. Several mutants have been isolated with defect in maintaining stem cell population in SAM. CLAVATA (CLV)1-3 mutants have over-proliferation of stem cells and conversely WUSCHEL (WUS) mutant plants are arrested at very early stage of development due to lack of stem cells. CLV3 and WUS protein govern the fate of stem cells by negative feed back loop mechanism. CLV3 encodes for a ligand and CLV1 encodes a leucine rich receptor kinase (LRRK), there are 216 LRRK in Arabidopsis. Only for few there are evidence for ligands and majority of these LRRK are orphans. We have identified a family of CLV3/ESR like (CLE) genes from Arabidopsis and other plants. For some of these genes we have shown that they are secreted and could be potential ligands. Expression analysis and preliminary observations on over-expression and antisense lines generated from these genes indicate their involvement in plant development. Further characterization of these genes is in progress and details would be discussed in the conference.