Fig. 1: Sucrose promotes stomatal development and alters cell fate in Arabidopsis epidermis.

a The stomatal index changes in response to light quantity. Seedlings of wild-type plants were grown on ½ MS solid medium with or without 1% sucrose under 16 h light/8 h dark photoperiod with different light intensity for 10 days. b Quantification of the effects of photoperiod and exogenous sucrose on stomatal development. Seedlings of wild-type plants were grown on ½ MS solid medium with or without 1% sucrose under different photoperiod with 100 µMol m⁻² s⁻¹ for 10 days. Numbers between bars indicated the relative fold changes of average means in the indicated conditions. c Quantification of the effects of different sugars on stomatal index. Seedlings of wild type Col-0 were grown in ½ MS liquid medium containing 30 mM mannitol (Man, 0.55%), sucrose (Suc, 1%), glucose (Glu, 0.54%), fructose (Fru, 0.54%), glucose-6-phosphate (G6P, 0.78%), and fructose-1,6-bisphosphate (FBP, 1%) under 16 h light/8 h dark photoperiod with 100 µMol m⁻² s⁻¹ continuously for 10 days. Error bars indicate standard deviation (S.D.) (n = 15–20). Different letters above the bars indicated statistically significant differences between the samples (ANOVA analysis followed by Uncorrected Fisher’s LSD multiple comparisons test, p < 0.05). d–o Sucrose alters cell fate in Arabidopsis epidermis. Seedlings of pSPCH::nucGFP, pSPCH::SPCH-GFP, pBASL::GFP-BASL and pMUTE::MUTE-GFP were grown in ½ MS liquid medium with or without 1% sucrose for 3 days under long-day condition. Quantification of the percentage of GFP-expressing cells over total epidermal cells of different transgenic plants. The fluorescent signals of GFP or GFP fused proteins are in green, PI-marked cell outlines are in purple. Scale bars in confocal images represent 20 μm. Error bars indicate S.D. (n = 15–20). Asterisk between bars indicated statistically significant differences between the samples (Student t test, ****p < 0.0001).