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Evo–devo

Failsafe flowers

Nature Reviews Genetics volume 10, page 152 (2009)Cite this article

The design of regulatory circuits determines their function — for example, whether they behave like developmental switches — but the specific details of the wiring can also be influenced by evolutionary pressures. A study of flower organ development shows that the interaction between two key regulatory proteins arose not because it is indispensable for function, but because it provides robustness against incorrect cell fate decisions.

Class B floral homeotic genes encode transcription factors that specify petals and male reproductive organs. The authors specifically examined two such genes, DEFICIENS and GLOBOSA, the products of which heterodimerize and maintain their own expression via a positive autoregulatory loop. Given that a single gene is capable of maintaining an autoregulatory loop, why would it be necessary to retain heterodimerization? The hypothesis tested here is that obligate heterodimerization between these two ancient paralogues is necessary to filter out noise, and hence to canalize flower development.

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References

ORIGINAL RESEARCH PAPER

  1. Lenser, T. et al. Developmental robustness by obligate interaction of class B floral homeotic genes and proteins. PLoS Comp. Biol. 5, e1000264 (2009)

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FURTHER READING

  1. Wilkinson, D. J. Stochastic modelling for quantitative description of heterogeneous biological systems. Nature Rev. Genet. 10, 122–133 (2009)

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

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Authors
  1. Tanita Casci
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Casci, T. Failsafe flowers. Nat Rev Genet 10, 152 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrg2545

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