Fig. 4: SlTOE1B promotes gland formation.

a Expression pattern of SlTOE1B. Leaves of 10-day-old seedlings of pSlTOE1B:NLS-Venus transgenic plants were analysed. PIE staining was used to show the cell edge. Chloroplast auto-fluorescence is shown in blue. All images were collected under the same condition and processed by maximum intensity projection of z-stacks. Bar: 50 μm. b SlTOE1B expression was quantified by fluorescence intensity measurement of z-stacked images of pSlTOE1B:NLS-Venus. Box plots show maximum, minimum, first and third quartiles, median (line). n represents the number of trichomes used for the quantification. At least two lines were quantified. c Expression of SlTOE1B in trichome cells by MTR1 promoter promotes gland formation. Nucleotide sequences show the miR172 target. Silent mutations are introduced to the miR172 target site in SlTOE1B to generate miR172-resistant form of SlTOE1B (marked as rSlTOE1B). Histogram shows the relative expression level of SlTOE1B in six pMTR1: rSlTOE1B stable transgenic lines. Data are shown as mean ± SD (n = 3 biological replicates). d SEM images show the trichome phenotype of line 6 and line 11. Bar: 100 μm. e Quantification of trichomes on the adult stems. The Y-axis represents the proportion of three categories of trichomes in the total number of trichomes. n represents the number of SEM images used for the quantification. 23 different SEM images from four individual WT plants and 32 different SEM images from five individual plants of pMTR1: rSlTOE1B were used for trichome quantification. Data are shown as mean ± SD. N: defective trichomes or developing trichomes. f SEM images show the trichome phenotype of the juvenile stems of cr-sltoe1b. Bar: 100 μm. g Quantification of trichomes on the juvenile stems. The Y-axis represents the proportion of three categories of trichomes in the total number of trichomes. n represents the number of SEM images used for the quantification. 13 different SEM images from seven individual WT plants and 12 different SEM images from eight individual plants of cr-sltoe1b were used for trichome quantification. Data are shown as mean ± SD. p-values were obtained by unpaired two-sided t-test in (b, c, e and g) and exact p-values of (e and g) are presented in the Supplementary Tables 4 and 5, respectively.