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Plant development

Branching out

Nature Reviews Genetics volume 4, page 402 (2003)Cite this article

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Branches are secondary shoots that grow from axillary meristems — mitotic cells that are located in leaf axils. There has been considerable interest in the mechanisms that control the formation of axillary meristems and determine whether or not they grow out into branches. The tomato lateral suppressor (ls) mutant, fails to produce branches during leaf-producing vegetative development and so provides a good starting point to study axillary meristems. With this in mind, Greb et al. identified the Arabidopsis orthologue of LS , which they call LATERAL SUPPRESSOR (LAS). Like the tomato ls mutant, transposon-generated las mutants do not produce branches during vegetative growth, but do in later reproductive development. Indeed, the similarity between the genes is high enough that the wild-type Arabidopsis LAS gene can rescue the tomato ls mutant.

Although rice might look different to tomato and Arabidopsis, there are similarities in the way that they grow. The main stem produces leaves with associated axillary meristems, and the meristems that are closest to the base can develop into tillers — grain-bearing branches. Li et al. found a spontaneous mutation that causes a loss of vegetative axillary meristems and, therefore, tillers, as well as a reduction in plant height and reproductive branching. The mutated gene — MONOCULM1 ( MOC1 ) — is homologous to LS. So, it seems that LS gene function is widely conserved.

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ORIGINAL RESEARCH PAPER

  1. Li, X. et al. Control of tillering in rice. Nature 422, 618–621 (2003)

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  2. Greb, T. et al. Molecular analysis of the LATERAL SUPRESSOR gene in Arabidopsis reveals a conserved control mechanism for axillary meristem formation. Genes Dev. 17, 1175–1187 (2003)

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Authors
  1. Catherine Baxter
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Jiayang Li's laboratory

Klaus Theres' laboratory

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Baxter, C. Branching out. Nat Rev Genet 4, 402 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrg1099

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